Ketchikan is five hundred miles north of Seattle, is Alaska's "first city," and as the first port of call for many cruise ships, its historic downtown, wedged between water and forested mountains, becomes saturated in summer with elderly tourists. Beyond the souvenir shopping it can be a delight, built into steep hills and partly propped on wooden pilings, with boardwalks, wooden staircases and totem poles dotted throughout. By 1886, white settlers had opened the first of dozens of canneries in what was soon to be the "salmon capital of the world."