Alaska News

Photos: Ketchikan tourist season in full swing

KETCHIKAN -- This Southeast town went back to work last week in the one big industry that still remains here: accommodating the thousands of tourists who arrive each day on the giant cruise ships that crowd its harbor.

A week after the plane crash that killed eight sightseeing visitors and their pilot, floatplanes were buzzing in the skies like almost nothing had happened.

Ketchikan, the first and last stop in Alaska for many of the massive cruise vessels, has about a dozen flight services, far more than one might expect for a town of about 8,200. It used to have a pulp mill with 500 workers and hundreds of well-paying logging jobs, but now the shuttered mill is an EPA Superfund site and the main economy emerging from the Tongass National Forest here is tourism.

Read more: Ketchikan doesn't skip a beat as tourists pour in after fatal air crash

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