Lobby &Admissions

“Water in Abundance Makes Us Fearless”

“Can’t Escape the Land”

“Sea Returns to Land”

creek view

cree

k vi

ew

“Sea Returns to Land”

“Noble/Vice”

“Island Mind”

“We Gather”

“Where Trees Come to Dance”

Old Groaner skull mounted in metal bear sculpture

Davis boat stained glasswindow

lighthouse lens

creek view

Main Exhibit Gallery approx. 2,000 SF

Tongass Historical Museum Main Gallery

scaled Alaska map

Permanent Exhibition Development

Community Grand Opening: April 27, 2018 (first ship May 3, 2018)

Development Process

• Building upon decades of telling local stories: which themes resurface continually and engage?

• Community Forums: common ideas emerged in every group including resiliency, diversity, creativity and how the weather defines us

• Conversations!

• Changing from “typical timeline” or “industry” approach: what is this community about? What is uniquely Ketchikan? Ketchikan is…

• Maximizing space. 1,500 images/artifacts identified initially

• Use of temporary gallery to further explore topics

• Draft section titles inspired by quotes from the community

view llustrating how to add interpretive space

“Water in abundance makes us fearless”

“Rain and water flowing makes for acceptance of our “place” in the land.”

Water is an universal symbol of life, its possibilities and hardships. Life in this region is not easy, but thanks to the water that surrounds us, it is abundant and rich. Between the drenching rain and the changing sea, wet is a way of life.

Fresh water runs down through our daily life in creeks and roads lined with waterfalls. “If you call these islands your home, then water flows through your veins”. Saltwater narrows and inlets are our pathways: they are our conduit to independence and the source of subsistence.

• Wet is a way of life: amount of rain, necessary gear • Life between fresh and saltwater: influence of tides, availability of fresh water • Water Changes our World: rainforest life • Waterways Connect Us: archipelago effect on way we live

Tools of the Trade: rain gear, tuffs, rubber gloves, low tide harvesting, rain gauge

“Can’t escape the land”

“The land was here first; work with it!”

Ketchikan is in a land of extremes which makes all aspects of life unique. In order to build a community on such an island, people must be resourceful and responsive. Protocols from other places aren’t necessarily applicable.

Indigenous communities have preserved a set of knowledge over millennia. When non-native settlers arrived here and became recipients of this understanding, it allowed them to gather and exploit resources. Knowledge is still handed down through generations as well as being parceled out to worthy newcomers.

• Our Place in the world: maps, geology, communities, language • What are we made of? Rock, tides, wind, Ketchikan Creek, POW caves • How we work: log pilings, connecting communities by water, boardwalks, trestles, stair streets, cedar, rope making, wire netting, utility systems

Tools of the Trade: tide book, cedar harvesting/weaving tools

Kids in rain gear ready for field trip to Model Dairy. 1929. Fisher photo. THS 61.8.1.274

Sextant. THS 70.5.3.1a

1917 Map of Ketchikan Mining Ditrict.

THS 69.4.10.216

“Sea returns to land” part two

Ketchikan is dependent upon the maritime infrastructure. All arrives by sea. The maritime world uses the forest to build homes and to build boats that will take them back out to the ocean.

The interdependency between sea and land continues to be the life-sus-taining force for this community.

• Industrialization of fishing: fish traps, Statehood driven by fish trap issues, fish hatcheries • Boat Building: Davis, Inman, Vigor, influence on trolling, halibut fishery • Boat types: change to powered, tugs and barges • Navigation: technology, lighthouses • Canneries: boom industry, preservation technology, Filipino workers • Market exploitation of resource • Commercial fleet today

Tools of the Trade: boat making tools, Davis boat and tools, pile driving/diving gear, fishing gear, nets

“Sea returns to land”

“Entwined with the rhythm of the sea, our world is made of salmon.”

There is a connection between water and life in the town. We partici-pate in a cycle: salmon return home from open water to creeks. They feed our forests, our animals, and us.

Fresh water races through the center of town and back out to the nar-rows, taking salmon back to the ocean. When these salmon return to the fresh water, they have completed their life cycles.

• A Forest Made of Fish: power of salmon life cycle • Subsistence: harvest of salmon, Native weirs • Politics of Property: clan ownership • Exploitation: abundance without responsibility vs. “we care for it because we are part of it “

Brailing a fish trap. Date unknown. Schallerer photo. THS 70.7.26.254

Davis boat made in Metlakatla. Circa 1940. KM 95.2.29.1

“Island Mind”

“We are Individuals who don’t belong anywhere else, committed to making a home.”

Far from the rest of the country and dotted throughout thousands of islands, the communities of Southeast Alaska engender their citizens with a sense of individuality, tight-knit community, and unconven-tional “island” ways.

This uniquely beautiful and unforgiving environment necessitates a self-actualization of character, a life of making and doing. Though you may have to be just a little unusual, if you belong here perhaps you don’t belong anywhere else.

It is a place of building, making, gathering and growth. It is a land of contradictions and dualities. Ketchikan’s particular confluence of rain, rock and off-center characters fashioning a living in uncertain and difficult conditions informs the way we see – and create – our world.

• Water Connects Us: Alaska Marine Highway, float planes, Grumman Goose • Remote Living: subsistence, radio contact, education • Creating richness of life: shopping, creativity, vocational training, gardening • Inland community cares for itself: community functions and organizations • Medical care • Barge lines • Search and Rescue • Survival training

Tools of the Trade: life vest, radio

“Noble/Vice”

“It is irresponsible to come to Alaska but you have to be responsible to stay.”

Ketchikan is, from the beginning, a town of dualities. Fiercely independent and yet heavily invested in each other, our citizens have historically skirted the system in order to do what they felt was right for themselves. Nuns operated the hospital so that they might give care to Native families. Mrs. Tatsuda carried groceries from one side of town to sell on the OTHER side of the creek. Dolly installed a trap door in her house so that she could get quality bootlegged liquor from Canada, rather than serve dangerous fake booze. Brothels and gam-bling parlors operated along the creek which ran through the heart of this young upstanding city.

This is a city of second chances, one in which people are judged on commitment and character. Two insti-tutions have historically served as social centers: bars and churches. In these places, one could find workers, cash, food, and company. As recently as the 1980s, Ketchikan supported the same number of bars as churches.

A rough and rowdy bunch, the people of Ketchikan simultaneously oriented themselves to the community and guided themselves, subvert-ing outside control in favor of self-regulation.

• Bars were banks, job centers, social support and relief • Creek as dividing line of city: red light district, Indian Town, non-white immigrants • War time: Aleut internment, Japanese internment • Sisters of St. Joseph • Fires • Racial interactions: “No Indians or Dogs Allowed”, Native schools

Tools of the Trade: gambling dice, bottles

Ellis Goose taking off. Circa 1950. THM 74.11.13.6

Hand Mirror “Compliments of M.E. Martin, 1915”. THS 75.6.10.278

“We gather”

“We gather together here more than anyplace…we gather together for everything.”

From the beginning, Ketchikan has been a gathering place where people come together. Finding ample resourc-es, this group became a community. Bands, civic organizations, bars, churches, lodges, potluck dinners, volunteer work, festivals, sports, carni-vals, holidays, cultural events, and everyday life have consistently provided reasons for people to meet up, share time and work together towards common goals and crazy dreams.

In the words of one resident, “Ketchikan may have cold, wet, dark winters, but it’s warm with people.”

• Civic Organizations: ANB/ANS, Sons of Norway, Pioneers, Moose, Elks, Eagles, Legion, Scouts • Cultural Center: Music, Monthly Grind, Square Dance, Bands, Choirs, Theater, Ballet • Makers: baseball on tide flats, Walker, artists, timber carnival • Water Connect Us: archipelago effect on the way we live • Pulp Mill closing: out of town’s control, community benefactor. “We are built on the bones of the past… the mill

“Where trees come to dance”

“We are drawn to a land apart from urban civilization, a land where the trees still dance. “

We fly over this land to see vast forests. The “Alaska” mystique is acted out in films and story books. We log, hike, trap, hunt, harvest, explore, mine, prepare for survival, and live remotely. Here, trees move to the rhythms of tides and winds with no regard for our comfort or surviv-al. This is a world driven by constant change, a world where we learn much making a living with the land.

Even though the ocean is a source of food and mobility, we are by nature creatures of the land. Whether we go to the forest to harvest it or we go to enjoy its solitude, we are fundamentally tied the trees. This temperate rainforest draws us here just as it informs all life here.

• Mystique: Groaner, Alaska Sportsman. films, mass media, Misty Fjords • Traditional bark harvesting • Mining: incorporated as mining town, POW, new metals, “Individual’s search” • Trapping: traplines • Logging: hand logging, float camps, Spruce Mill, “The Tongass” • Totem poles • C.R. Snow • Tourism

Tools of the Trade: logging gear, mining gear, blacksmithing, bark shredder, adze

1st Game in the “new” Kayhi gym. Dec. 1955. KM 2003.2.63.1136

Whale Pass logger. 1970. Manty photo.

THS 78.9.5.1037