Creek Street, Ketchikan, Alaska
It Ain’t What it Used to Be
The posters and bumper stickers are everywhere, all variations on a theme: “When in Ketchikan, be sure to visit historic Creek Street.” And to be sure, it is indeed a lovely stroll. What are now mostly gift shops and other forms of tourist traps used to be snares of a different kind.
You see, up until the early 1950s, Creek Street was the location of the legal brothels in Ketchikan. In fact, the last time I was there — not what you think; I was there to cover the annual high school basketball tournament — some of the shops had mannequins on display in the upstairs rooms. All dressed in come-hither lingerie and illuminated with the infamous red lights, which lent their name to the generic term for such districts.
The street is built along both sides of Ketchikan Creek, an important spawning ground for returning salmon, which once played a much more important role in the city’s economy than it does today.
All of which is background to what true Alaskans say about Ketchikan:
“When in Ketchikan, be sure to visit historic Creek Street…where fish and fishermen went upstream to spawn.”
