All About Sitka

Sitka's most comprehensive visitor guide.

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We hope that in the pages of this visitor’s guide you find what you
are looking for to make your stay pleasant and memorable.
Whether your taste runs to a fishing charter, a hike on forest trails,
visiting museums, shopping in the local stores or following some other
pursuit, you should find ample opportunity here to satisfy your desires.
You’ll find Sitka is pretty well connected to the rest of the world, and
that you can surf the Internet here as easily as you can at home.
One thing you may find unusual, and even surprising about our town:
despite our obvious visitor accommodations and attractions, Sitka
looks and feels “like a real town.”

It’s not an accident. Sitka prides itself as a center for education and health care and as a world-class fishing port. Add to that the historic heritage from the two eventful centuries since the Russians came, and from untold centuries of Native culture. It is a town where neighbors watch out for each
other. We care about visitors, and we care about the impression they will
take away from our town. In recent years Sitkans have asked themselves
what it is that they most value about our community -- things
they don’t want to risk losing in the worldwide expansion of tourist
travel.

The answer has come back, and is validated frequently in the results
of ballot questions and collaborative workshops open to all residents:
visitors will always be welcome, but we want the town they see and
experience to be the one that we live in and work in 365 days a year,
not a carbon copy of the shoreside malls that now characterize so many
other tourist ports.
 

Sitka is a working town, and like any other community it has its
shortcomings. But we love it, and if you look around, we hope you will
see the reasons for that. Some things, we feel, are worth keeping and protecting, and we seek that balance between the new and the old that keeps our town a very special place.
 

Enjoy your stay.

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