Ketchikan's approximately 12,000 residents live on Revillagigedo Island which is located on the southern end of Alaska's Inside passage. Ketchikan is 680 air miles north of Seattle and is located in the Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest national forest totaling 17 million acres. When traveling to Alaska from the "Lower 48" Ketchikan is Alaska's first major city and is therefore Alaska's "First City."
The town's name originated from the Tlingit "kitschk-hin" who used Ketchikan Creek as a fish camp. The name means creek of "thundering wings of an eagle." Ketchikan does receive an average of 162 inches of rain a year which gives us the distinction of being the wettest city in North America. Ketchikan residents can always find the bright side though and luckily salmon love the rain making Ketchikan "The Salmon Capital of the World."
The Ketchikan campus, the oldest campus in the region, was originally established as Ketchikan Community College in 1954. It is located in Alaska’s First City, which regards itself as the salmon capital of the world. The campus awards both certificates and associate degrees. Business and industry programs are delivered on this campus, as well as a core of technical, maritime studies and other vocational courses.
The college that opened in Ketchikan in autumn 1954 was a night school on a hill, borrowing old Main School for classrooms and registering 40 students at five bucks a credit-hour for the inaugural term of academic classes.
But Ketchikan Community College grew steadily in its adult education mission. The college steadily progressed from rented venues to its own facilities, from pioneering as one of the first two community colleges in Alaska to participating as an extended campus of the University of Alaska Southeast system.
KCC moved in 1955 after its first year, setting up in then-new Ketchikan High School. Shortly thereafter the college shifted again, to the Assay Office downtown. The college ended its first decade with yet another home, opening doors in the Reid Building on Front Street in 1963. Here the college offered its first daytime classes. At the 10th anniversary, KCC boasted close to 300 students: 82 academic students and 216 nonacademic students were on the rolls.
The community and a major employer combined to lift Ketchikan Community College over a new threshold in 1967. Ketchikan Pulp Co. donated land above the city and Ketchikan Gateway Borough voters approved a bond for construction of the Ziegler Building at Seventh and Madison streets. The facility opened in autumn 1969, housing a library, classrooms, administrative offices and labs for clerical and vocational training.
The hilltop campus grew in 1973 upon completion of the Paul Building, with a complement of classrooms, faculty offices, a lounge for students, college offices and the Forum Room for community use. By the fall of 1974, enrollment at the college was close to 500 students.
A growing community need for vocational education led to purchase and remodeling of a downtown facility in 1976. The onetime bowling alley at 600 Stedman Street became the Robertson Building, with offices, classrooms and a diesel shop. The waterfront campus grew in 1987 as the new Hamilton Building opened with a welding lab and classrooms.
That year also brought the inclusion of old Ketchikan Community College into a statewide restructuring of the University of Alaska. KCC became University of Alaska Southeast Ketchikan campus, and campuses were rechristened in Sitka and Juneau. When Ketchikan campus reached its 40th-anniversary mark in 1994, the small college was enrolling around more than 70 full-time academic students and more than 600 part-time and non-credit students each term.
Written by,
Mike Dunning, Ph.D., History Department
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