Photo: Ifly6 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk of about two miles through downtown Ketchikan, looping from the cruise berths up Ketchikan Creek to the Totem Heritage Center and back. It starts at The Rock and Nathan Jackson's eagle, Thundering Wings, and passes St. John's Episcopal Church of 1902, once reached by boat, and the third Chief Kyan pole, raised in 1993. At the creek, where Tlingit people kept a seasonal fish camp long before the town, it follows the Chief Johnson pole, Creek Street and Dolly's House, the red-light district that lasted until the early 1950s, and the Married Man's Trail up to the salmon ladder at the falls. The last part visits the Tongass Historical Museum and the Raven Stealing the Sun pole, the Totem Heritage Center with its nineteenth-century poles from Tlingit and Haida village sites, City Park and the hatchery, and the fishing quarter of the Stedman–Thomas district, ending at the Sun Raven pole.
20 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 21 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 1 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The Rock, Thundering Wings, First Methodist, Ketchikan Coliseum Theater, St. John's Episcopal Church, Chief Kyan Totem Pole, Ketchikan Federal Building, Ketchikan Creek.
Chief Johnson Totem Pole, Creek Street, Dolly's House, Married Man's Trail, Salmon Ladder.
Tongass Historical Museum, Raven Stealing the Sun totem pole, Totem Heritage Center, City Park, Deer Mountain Tribal Hatchery, Stedman–Thomas Historic District, Sun Raven Totem Pole.
The third pole carrying the Brown Bear crest of the Tongass Tlingit leader George Kyan, carved by Israel Shotridge and raised in 1993.
A replica raised in 1989 where the Tongass Tlingit settled at the creek, telling of Fog Woman and the creation of the salmon.
The boardwalk on pilings that was Ketchikan's red-light district into the 1950s, with trap doors left from the bootlegging years.
Concrete pools that carry spawning salmon around a natural falls about ten feet high, watched from the footbridge in the runs.
A thirty-nine-foot cedar pole carved by Dempsey Bob in 1982, read from Raven at the top down to the chief at its base.
Opened in 1976 to hold original nineteenth-century poles from Tlingit and Haida villages, kept as they were found.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 20 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 20 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Ketchikan — Creek Street, the Totems and the Salmon Town, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
20 narration points, including Ketchikan Creek, Dolly's House, Tongass Historical Museum, Totem Heritage Center and The Rock. That is about 16 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 20 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.