Getting Around Ketchikan

Downtown Ketchikan is a genuine walking town. The four cruise berths line the downtown waterfront in a row, numbered I to IV from south to north, so stepping off any of them puts you on the same narrow strip of Front Street within a minute or two of the shops, the cruise port welcome infrastructure and the museum buildings. Creek Street, the historic boardwalk over Ketchikan Creek, sits at the quiet end of downtown. The official Port of Ketchikan page does not state a walking distance or walking time from the berths to Creek Street. The city publishes berth layouts, not pedestrian estimates, so plan by look at a map rather than by a published figure.

One climb catches people out. The streets behind the waterfront rise quickly toward Deer Mountain, and the Married Man's Trail, which leaves the northeast end of Creek Street and follows the creek upstream on stairs and boardwalk, gains about 100 feet in roughly a fifth of a mile according to secondary sources. No official city or Forest Service page describes that trail at all, so treat any figure attached to it as unofficial.

Practical points for walking: the boardwalk at Creek Street is free and public, rain is the default rather than the exception, and sidewalks along the main drag are short. For a walking-first day plan, see our page on Ketchikan without a tour. Wear real shoes with grip. The boardwalk and the stairs get slick, and the town does not flatten out for you because a ship is in.

Ketchikan Gateway Borough Transit, known simply as The Bus, runs the fixed routes in town. The published fares are simple. An adult aged 19 to 59 pays $2.00 per ride. Youth and senior riders pay half of that. If you expect to ride more than twice, the Token Transit app sells a digital day pass for $5.00. For longer stays, a monthly unlimited pass costs $25.00 and an annual unlimited pass costs $179.00. You can pay with cash, but it must be exact change, or with the Token Transit app. There is no on-board change-making and no paper pass system described on the borough fare page.

What the routes reach matters more than what they cost. The bus runs along the corridors where people actually are, which for a visitor means the highway north toward Totem Bight State Historical Park at milepost 10 of North Tongass Highway, and the way south toward Saxman Native Village. Both sit on the road system, which is exactly why they are the two totem sites a bus rider can realistically reach without a tour. The park charges a $5.00 per person day-use entry fee on top of the fare.

Be honest with yourself about the math. A bus plan and a short ship call fight each other. Cruise calls run a handful of hours, the bus does not run on your ship's schedule, and waiting for a return ride eats the clock fast. If your ship is in for most of a day and you only want one destination, the bus can work. If your call is short, walking downtown or a booked tour with pier pickup is the realistic option. Fare figures here come from the borough's official fare page.

Two things the borough publishes that almost nobody repeats. The first is a Free Downtown Shuttle Zone: a Bus+ service running inside the downtown zone, roughly from Bryant Street to the Coast Guard Base, daily through the summer season and on cruise-ship days into late October. Inside that zone there is no fare at all. If your ship is at a downtown berth and you only want to move along the waterfront, that is your answer.

The second is the rest of the fare table. A single ride is $2.00 for an adult aged 19 to 59, but $1.00 for anyone 18 or under and $1.00 for anyone 60 or over, and it is free for an ADA paratransit cardholder. The day pass is $5.00, or $2.50 at the senior and youth rate. Longer stays have their own tiers: a 25-ride punch pass at $20.00, a month unlimited at $25.00, six months at $125.00 and a year at $179.00. Pay cash with exact change or use the Token Transit app.

Here is the most useful sentence on this page: no official municipal page enumerates taxi companies or confirms Uber or Lyft coverage in Ketchikan. We read the borough's public works pages looking for exactly that. The borough does not publish a taxi directory, and no official source we found states that either rideshare app operates here. Because no official source confirms it, we do not assert it either. Ketchikan is a small, isolated town, and it is entirely possible that app-based rideshare coverage is thin or absent.

What should you actually do about that before you land? Three things. First, do not build a plan that assumes you can open an app and summon a car, because no official source supports that assumption. Second, if you want a taxi, plan to find one at the downtown cruise berths or ask at the Visitors Bureau at 131 Front St, which is next to the dock on weekdays from 8:00am to 5:00pm. Third, if a taxi is essential to your day, arrange it in advance with a named local company through your hotel or lodge rather than counting on street hails.

Note also what the sources do not cover at Ward Cove. No official page confirms that taxis or independent tour operators pick up passengers directly at the Ward Cove dock. The documented connection is the complimentary shuttle to Berth IV downtown, which runs continuously from ship arrival and takes about 20 minutes each way. For a cruise-day plan that avoids the question entirely, see shore excursions.

Ketchikan's road system runs a short way north and a short way south along Tongass Highway, and then it stops. It connects to no other town, no highway, and no mainland network. Ketchikan is a road-limited island community, reachable by air and sea only. How long the road system is in miles is a figure no official source publishes. We checked the borough's own Roads page. The length is not stated there or anywhere else on an official site, so we print that instead of a number.

That fact shapes what renting a car gets you. A rental car cannot take you to another community. It cannot reach most of the places visitors actually want, because the marquee destinations sit beyond the pavement. What the road does reach is the string of sights along North Tongass Highway, including Herring Cove and the rainforest preserve area at its end, plus Totem Bight and the park at milepost 10. A car is worth it for three cases. One, you are staying several days rather than calling by ship. Two, you want to control your own timing at multiple highway stops in one day. Three, rain is hammering down and you would rather sit in a dry car than wait at a bus stop.

For everything else, treat a rental as a local errand tool, not an exploration tool. Beyond the pavement, your options are tours with vehicle transfers, and the boat-and-plane trips described on our day trips page. If your time is one ship call, compare a guided option on our tours catalogue before renting anything.

Everything past the pavement is a boat or a plane. This is not a marketing line, it is the access situation stated by the land managers themselves.

Misty Fjords National Monument, a 2,142,243-acre US Forest Service wilderness east of town, sits roughly 22 to 40 miles out by water and is reachable only by boat or floatplane via Behm Canal. The Forest Service states no entrance fee for the monument, but getting there means booking a flightseeing or boat operator, since there is no road and no self-drive option. Flightseeing operators fly under FAA on-demand air taxi certificates, and the Forest Service requires commercial guides on Tongass lands to hold a special use permit.

The same rule applies to wildlife sites. Neets Bay, home to the SSRAA salmon hatchery and its seasonal black bear viewing, is road-inaccessible and reached by chartered floatplane flights during the late summer run. There is no published public access permit from SSRAA, so access is a tour arrangement. Even places that feel close, like the coves along Behm Canal, are boat trips.

The practical takeaway: budget for tours, not fuel. Browse Misty Fjords tours and bear viewing at Neets Bay to see what off-road access actually costs.