Dave Kiffer is a freelance writer living in Ketchikan, Alaska. A freelance writer is an uncommitted independent writer who produces and sells articles to a publisher such as SitNews. Contact Dave at dave@sitnews.us Copyright 2005-2008 Dave Kiffer All Rights Reserved

Ketchikan Celebrates Milestone By DAVE KIFFER - Ketchikan turns 110 years old this week. - More...
Monday - August 23, 2010

History of Alaska Tourism, Part 2; Tourism Grew Significantly From Goldrush To World War II; Alaska Benefited Twice From Uncertainty In Europe A feature article By DAVE KIFFER - Just as the Klondike Gold Rush was beginning to wear down, and Alaska was becoming a little less prominent in the national media, another event took place that boosted Alaska's national profile and helped boost tourism to the district. - More...
Monday - August 16, 2010

Pat Hagiwara dies at 91; Former Resident Was Member of Most Decorated Military Unit in World War II By DAVE KIFFER - Hagiwara was born and raised in Ketchikan and served in the military in World War II. Like all local Japanese American residents he was swept up in the controversy over the World War internment of Japanese American citizens. - More...
Saturday - July 24, 2010

Seward was one of Alaska's First 'Tourists (A History of Alaska Tourism, Part One) - It can be argued that the first "tourist" to visit Alaska was the man who was most responsible for the purchase of the territory, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward. -- More...
Monday - July 12, 2010

Bell Island Hot Springs was 'good for what ails you'; Local resort has been private club for the last three decades A Feature Article By DAVE KIFFER - Oral tradition indicates that the hot springs on what is now called Bell Island, 40 miles north of Ketchikan on Behm Canal, have been used for centuries by the local Native tribes, who recognized the medicinal qualities of the springs and the mineral water.- More...
Wednesday - June 09, 2010

Prince Rupert Turns 100 By DAVE KIFFER - On March 10, The City of Prince Rupert is celebrating the centennial of its incorporation in 1910. - More...
Monday - March 08, 2010

Canadian Tsimshian Was A Leader For Alaska Native Rights; Peter Simpson Also Owned Alaska's First Native Business A Feature Article By DAVE KIFFER - Although the vast majority of the leaders in the Alaska Native civil rights movement were Tlingits, one of the founders and early leaders was a Tsimshian, originally from Canada, named Peter Simpson. - More...
Thursday - February 18, 2010

2009 Year In Review; Some Times No Big News is Good News By DAVE KIFFER - Unlike some other years in recent memory, there was no single story that dominated Ketchikan and set local tongues to wagging in 2009. - More...
Friday - January 08, 2010

'Ollie' Prest Was First To Fly Into SE; Famous Air Daredevil Nearly Beat Roy Jones To Ketchikan in 1921 A Feature Story By DAVE KIFFER - Most locals are aware that Roy Jones flew the seaplane Northbird into Ketchikan the summer of 1922 and brought air flight to Southern Southeast. - More...
Wednesday - December 23, 2009

Canoe Accident Led To The Founding of Saxman; Tribes had hoped to locate new village on Annette Island A Feature Story By DAVE KIFFER - An ill-fated winter canoe trip in Tongass Narrows more than 120 years ago eventually led to the founding of Saxman, and also, indirectly, to the founding of Metlakatla as well.- More...
Thursday AM - November 26, 2009

Ketchikan War Hero Honored at UW; Van Winkle one of eight UW Medal of Honor Recipients A Feature Story By DAVE KIFFER - A Ketchikan war hero was honored at the University of Washington on Veterans' Day along seven other winners of the nation's highest military honor. More...
Monday PM - November 23, 2009

Alaskan Lighthouses Lit The Way; For Safer Southeast Maritime Travel By DAVE KIFFER - There are few places darker than the waters of Alaska on overcast nights. Over the centuries, hundreds of ships and thousands of mariners have come to grief on the rugged, unforgiving coast line. - More...
Friday - November 06, 2009

Catching a Can in Ketchikan; A History of the 'Canned Salmon Capital of the World' - In the Spring of 1900, Ketchikan was rife with rumors of war, a salmon war.- More...
Wednesday - September 23, 2009

Revilla Hoped to Eclipse Ketchikan; Ward Cove Community Sought to Be "The Town of SE Alaska" - Most Ketchikan residents are aware that at in 1900 both Ketchikan and Loring were locked in battle to be the "big town" in southern Southeast Alaska. - More...
Friday - July 31, 2009

History of Creek Street Has Always Been Commerce a feature story By DAVE KIFFER - In many ways, the true history of Ketchikan's "infamous" Creek Street is lost in the fog shrouded mists that often covered the dozens of small bawdy houses that lined both sides of the Ketchikan Creek boardwalk for more than half a century. - More....
Wednesday - June 10, 2009

Four Major Industries Built Ketchikan By DAVE KIFFER - The history of Ketchikan can be easily summed up in the history of four industries: Mining, Fishing, Timber and Tourism. - More...
Wednesday - May 06, 2009

White Cliff Reopens; Building was West End School for nearly 80 years - With the reopening of the old White Cliff school as a new office building housing the Ketchikan Gateway Borough offices and other commercial tenants this month, a building that has been an important part of the community's history now has an opportunity to be an important part of its future. - More...
Friday - April 10, 2009

Centenarian Inga Brinck Recalls Ketchikan's Early Days - When Inga (Hanson) Brinck was born, Ketchikan itself was just a child.

Brinck was born on March 9, 1909 and recently turned 100, probably the first person to reach the century mark after spending her entire life in the city of Ketchikan. - More...
Tuesday - March 17, 2009

William Paul Was The "Father of Native Land Claims"; And A Pretty Fair College Football Player, Too - Although Elizabeth Peratrovich is probably the most honored of the Alaska Native leaders who fought for civil rights in the first half of the 20th Century, there were other prominent leaders, including William Paul Sr. of Ketchikan. - More...
Monday AM - January 16, 2009

2008 - Top Stories: Bridge, Gas Prices, Weather were Top Stories; Ketchikan's Bridge Returns To The National Stage - It's Baaaaaaack!!!

Ketchikan's "Bridge to Nowhere" made a big return to the national spotlight in the Fall of 2008 when Alaska Governor Sarah Palin used her action "canceling" the bridge project as a major plank in her "reformist maverick" agenda in seeking the Vice Presidency of the United States. - More...
Monday - January 12, 2009

Ketchikan Supported Alaska Statehood, Eventually; Chronicle, Daily News Fought The Battle Locally - Ketchikan, Alaska - When legislation creating the state of Alaska passed the US Congress on June 30, 1958, several hundred residents of Ketchikan gathered at the corner of Mission and Front Streets for an impromptu celebration. - More...
Saturday - January 03, 2009

Irvin Thompson Reburied In California; Ketchikan War Hero's Remains Were Identified After 60 Years - A Ketchikan man, who was Alaska's first casualty in World War II, is a little closer to home after being reburied last month in a veteran's cemetery in California.- More...
Thursday - December 18, 2008

When 'The Great Influenza' Shut Down Ketchikan; More than a dozen residents died, but Ketchikan had a milder strain than other communities in 1918... A Feature Story by DAVE KIFFER - Ninety years ago on November 23rd, the city of Ketchikan let out a collective sigh of relief. - More...
Wednesday AM - November 26, 2008

The Killer Storm of October, 1918; Hundreds died when 'hurricane" raked the North Coast - Like most of the world, the eyes of the residents of the Northern British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska coast were on Europe in October of 1918. - More...
Saturday PM - October 25, 2008

Third USS Alaska Saw Action In World War II - Part 2 By DAVE KIFFER - The third USS Alaska was a battle cruiser, a hybrid vessel that had much of the weaponry of the 1930s era battleships, but the also the speed of the smaller cruisers because they were narrower and carried much less armor protection. - More...
Monday - August 04, 2008

SURVIVING THE BIGGEST WAVE EVER; 50 Years Ago, 1,700 Foot Wave Devastated Lituya Bay - Alaska is a land of geological superlatives: Big mountains, vast spaces, huge earthquakes. - More...
Tuesday - July 08, 2008

Four "Alaskas" Have Sailed In US Fleets - Part 1 - A Feature Story By DAVE KIFFER - Over the past 140 years, four American naval vessels have borne the name USS Alaska., ranging from a 19th Century war sloop to a 21st century nuclear submarine.- More...
Wednesday - June 18, 2008

Hunt Photos Show Ketchikan in Pioneer Days - Of the handful of people who helped Ketchikan grow from a collection of beach shacks to a city in the early 1900s, one would be hard pressed to find a more crucial family than the Hunt family, which not only established one of the earliest businesses, but also documented the founding of Ketchikan with an extensive photo collection. - More...
Saturday - March 22, 2008

Alaska Celebrates Civil Rights Pioneer; Peratrovich's Efforts Pre-Dated Martin Luther King - Elizabeth Jean Wanamaker Peratrovich is often referred to as the Martin Luther King of Alaska, but the truth is she was fighting for equal rights for Alaska Natives a decade before Martin Luther King gained fame during the Civil Rights movement. - More...
Monday - February 18, 2008

2007 Year In Review: Plane Crashes, Fires Top 2007 Stories By DAVE KIFFER - 2007 was a year in which tragedies struck during the summer visitor season and again right before Christmas. - More...
Thursday AM - January 03, 2008

KPU: Ketchikan's Home Grown Utility; Water, Power and Telephone for more than 7 Decades By DAVE KIFFER - For more than 70 years, KPU - or Ketchikan Public Utilities as it is officially known - has been a constant, and sometimes controversial, presence in the lives of local residents. - More...
Wednesday AM - December 19, 2007

Centennial Building Celebrates 40th Birthday - The Centennial Building has been the home of the Ketchikan Public Library and the Tongass Historical Museum for nearly four decades, yet the building itself and the "urban renewal" project that changed the face of the area near Ketchikan Creek that it was part of nearly didn't happen at all. - More...
Wednesday AM - November 21, 2007

US Navy Bombed Angoon 125 Years Ago; Attack was later called a 'misunderstanding' - One hundred and twenty-five years ago , the United States Navy - then the only governmental authority in Alaska - shelled and burned the village of Angoon after a dispute and an alleged hostage situation. - More...
Monday AM - October 29, 2007

Voss Family: From Europe to Ketchikan - When a new Ketchikan library is eventually built, a big thank you will be owed to a family that may have had its roots in the upper class circles of Europe but made its home in our small working class Alaskan town. - More...
Friday AM - September 28, 2007

Fatal Plane Crashes Average One a Year; Changing weather is the frequent cause - By DAVE KIFFER - The fatal crashes of two floatplanes in the Ketchikan area this summer is a sad reminder that local air travel can be a hazardous business. - More...
Saturday - August 25, 2007

"Cruising to Alaska, Circa 1887"; A Journal of a Trip on the Ancon and An Eyewitness to the Founding of Metlakatla - A century ago, "cruise" travel in Alaska was much different from today. - More...
Tuesday AM - August 07, 2007

Alaska/Canada Salmon 'War' Was 10 Years Ago - Last fall, a delegation of Ketchikan officials visited Prince Rupert to get an update on the Canadian city's new $200 million dollar container port and to learn how Ketchikan shippers could use the port to send products abroad. - More...
Thursday - July 19, 2007

A Sad Chapter of World War II in Alaska; Aleuts Relocated for Safety, Yet Many Died At Ward Lake a feature story By DAVE KIFFER - Sixty Five years ago this month, the Japanese invaded Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

In the grand scheme of World War II, it was only a feint. The idea was to attack American "home" territory to draw attention away from the central Pacific where the Japanese hoped to deal a crippling blow to U.S. forces at Midway and drive the US Navy back to Pearl Harbor or even San Francisco. - More...
Saturday - June 23, 2007

A Tale of Two Cruise Ships; Whatever Happened to the Rotterdam and the Polar Star? - In the twenty-first century, nothing becomes obsolete faster than old cruise ships.

In earlier days of "cruising" it was not unusual for venerable liners like the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth to sail the oceans for decades. Now - in an time of on board climbing walls and ship-wide wi-fi - passenger liners seem to be outdated the minute their keels hit the water. - More...
Monday - May 28, 2007

1927: When Ketchikan was the Largest City in Alaska; 80 year old article catches Ketchikan's boom time - Even in 1927, Ketchikan was thought of by other Alaskan communities as a "suburb" of Seattle. - More...
Monday - April 30, 2007

Ketchikan took shape 120 years ago - One hundred and twenty years ago in March, the quiet of Tongass Narrows was broken by the sound of hammers and saws. - More...
Saturday - April 07, 2007

Prince Rupert: Hays' 'Orphan' Looks To The Future - When the Titanic sank in 1912 and more than 1,500 people drowned in the North Atlantic there were many left orphan on both sides of the Atlantic. But Charles Melville Hays left the biggest orphan of all: The nascent city of Prince Rupert. - More...
Wednesday AM - February 28, 2007

A Famous Artist Runs Aground In Loring - On August 28, 1889, the side-wheel steamer Ancon made one of its regular stops in the small village on Loring in Naha Bay on Revillagigedo Island, 20 miles north of what would later become Ketchikan. It was heading back south after a run up the Inside Passage from Port Townsend, Washington to Sitka, Juneau, Fort Wrangell and Chilcat (Klukwan). - More...
Tuesday PM - February 13, 2007

Pan Am: Once Ketchikan's Link to the Outside World - In 1991, the original Pan American World Airways ceased operations. After going under in December of 1991, Pan American World Airways' name was purchased out of bankruptcy court. - More...
Friday - December 29, 2006

Weinstein Longest Serving Ketchikan Mayor - When Bob Weinstein completes his current term as Ketchikan City Mayor in 2009, he will be the longest serving mayor in Ketchikan's history with 12 years in office. - More...
Wednesday - November 29, 2006

After 50 Years, The Shamrock's Luck Finally Ran Out -  Taxes helped spell the death of one Ketchikan's most infamous watering holes in the early 1980s, but not without a little a help from undercover cops, religious leaders and a "Modern Day Queen of the Nile." - More...
Wednesday - November 15, 2006

Schallerer's Shuttered: Ketchikan Photo Shop was nearly 80 years old. Feature story By DAVE KIFFER - One of longest lasting businesses in Ketchikan history is ending its run this winter according to current owner Joe Shinn, but at least there will be plenty of photographs to remember it by. - More...
Wednesday PM - October 18, 2006

The 'Wickersham' sailed on after leaving Alaska - Although the MV Wickersham was only part of the Alaska Marine Highway System for five years, many locals still fondly recall its stately figure cruising the Inside Passage. - More...
Wednesday - October 11, 2006

Lighthouse Family Returns to Guard Island - From the time it was built in the early 1900s to the time it was automated in the 1970s, dozens of people lived on tiny Guard Island at the northern end of Tongass Narrows near Vallenar Point on Gravina Island. Last year, a family that had lived on the island in 1950s came back for a visit. - More...
Tuesday - September 19, 2006

Ketchikan's First State Election Was All Tied Up - Once upon a time, Alaska was a very Democratic state, politically speaking. - More...
Monday - September 18, 2006

A Look Back At Alaska's Worst Unsolved Mass Murder - A morning fog blanketed Craig on Sept. 7, 1982.

The nearly 75 boats in the District 4 seine fleet had left port for a next-day opening in the waters west of Craig near Noyes Island. A few boats were still at the dock awaiting the inevitable repairs that are needed during the hectic, brief summer openings. - More...
Wednesday - September 06, 2006

From Iwo Jima to Icy Strait, the long, colorful history of the Acushnet - The Ketchikan based cutter Acushnet celebrates its 60th birthday in the US Coast Guard this week, but it faces an uncertain future. - More...
Wednesday - August 23, 2006

The Founding of Metlakatla By DAVE KIFFER - Nearly 120 years ago today, an American coastal steamer pulled into Port Chester on the west side of Annette Island. On board the "Ancon" was the federal commissioner of education Nathaniel H.R. Dawson who was on a tour of educational facilities in the territory. - More...
Monday AM - August 07, 2006

MINING, ONCE KETCHIKAN'S PRINCIPAL INDUSTRY By DAVE KIFFER - These days, when millions of dollars worth of non-native gemstones are sold each summer in Ketchikan, it pays to remember that once upon a time mining was the principal industry in town.- More...
Friday - July 28, 2006

THE GRAND SHIPS OF THE ALASKA MARINE HIGHWAY SYSTEM By DAVE KIFFER - By all accounts, it was one of the largest traffic jams in Ketchikan's history. - More...
Friday - July 07, 2006

Ketchikan Federal Building Added to National Register of Historic Places - To some locals it is the "Big Pink."

The workers within its walls often call it the "Pepto (Bismo) Palace." - More...
Wednesday - June 15, 2006

Adah Sparhawk Young: Woman Pioneer By DAVE KIFFER - The history of Ketchikan is full of stories of the pioneering men who built the community out of the rainforest. But little is known about the pioneer women who also made Ketchikan what it is today. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

A Long Day's Journey into Behm Canal - It takes a special event to get nearly 400 Ketchikan residents out of bed and standing in line at 7 in the morning. - More...
Tuesday - April 25, 2006

J.R. Heckman, Captain Sayles and the San Francisco Earthquake - A century ago today, a massive earthquake devastated San Francisco area. It - and the fires that followed - wiped out more than half of the city of 400,000 people. More than 28,000 buildings and 500 city blocks were destroyed. Contemporary accounts downplayed the loss of life, but modern estimates place the death toll at nearly 4,000 people. - More...
Tuesday - April 18, 2006

The Erwicks of Ketchikan - In the first two decades of the 20th Century several hundred Norwegian families migrated to Southeast Alaska, primarily to take part in the fishing industry. - More...
Tuesday - March 21, 2006

Boom Town, Ketchikan in the 1950s - The years immediately after World War II were lean ones in Ketchikan.

While the Depression had had less of an effect here than elsewhere in the country, the economic boost of the war years had artificially supported the local economy. With the end of the war, it became obvious that the dominant industry - the canned salmon industry - was in sharp decline and as the fishing industry waned so did Ketchikan. - More...
Monday - February 20, 2006

The Village of Port Gravina By DAVE KIFFER - Every so often Ketchikan residents - squeezed between Tongass Narrows and the mountains - look over at the relatively flat bench land of Gravina Island and wonder "why didn't someone build a town over there?" - More...
Saturday - February 04, 2006

YEAR IN REVIEW: 2005 - Gravina Bridge story spans country

2005 was the year in which Ketchikan and its "bridge to nowhere" were national news. - More....
Friday - December 30, 2006

The Grounding of the Princess Sophia - There was a light dusting of snow on downtown Juneau as John Fraser "Jack" Pugh waited at the steamship wharf for the arrival of the Canadian Pacific steamship Princess Sophia shortly after dark of Oct. 22, 1918. - More...
Monday - December 05, 2005

The Ferries To Gravina - While the "Bridge to Nowhere" steals all the headlines, Ketchikan's airport ferries continue to chug back and forth to the Ketchikan International Airport as they have a dozen or more times a day for the past 30 years. - More...
Thursday - November 17, 2005

Abolition of Alaska's Death Penalty - In 1938, a Native woman was murdered on a hillside above what is now Tatsuda Way in Ketchikan. Her killer - her son-in-law - became the only Ketchikan man to ever be executed for first degree murder. And the execution - along with a handful of others in the territory - helped convinced officials to ban the death penalty when Alaska became a state 20 years later. - More...
Saturday - October 15, 2005

TAMING RIPPLE ROCK - Half a century ago, sailing the Inside Passage from Seattle to Alaska wasn't as safe as it is today. A pair of dangerous underwater peaks jointly called Ripple Rock created severe whirlpools in the waters near Vancouver Island, sinking numerous ships and claiming more than 100 lives. It took the largest non-nuclear explosion in history to finally end the threat. - More...
Friday - September 23, 2005

MAHONEY HEIGHTS, TODAY'S DEERMOUNT - Only the truly old-timers remember when the neighborhood now called Deermount was known as Mahoney Heights. - More...
Wednesday - September 07, 2005

Newtown, Over A Century Old - In the mid 1890s, Ketchikan was a still a collection of rough shacks gathered around Clark and Martin's mercantile store just north of the Ketchikan Creek mudflats. The town population was somewhere between 100 and 200 people, but less than half of that were year round residents. - More...
Thursday - August 18, 2005

World War II: 60th Anniversary - Sixty years ago this week World War II was about to come a sudden end, but like most other Americans, Ketchikan residents were preparing for many more months of sacrifice. - More...
Thursday - August 04, 2005

There's Giegers in them thar hills; Bokan Mountain and the Alaska uranium "Boom" - Fifty years ago this month, Mrs. John Thomas of Ballston Spa, New York performed a historic act. According to the Associated Press, she turned on her electric stove and cooked a hamburger. - More...
Sunday - July 10, 2005