Alaska Starts Here: A Seward Walking Tour

Seward sits where the Alaska Railroad meets the sea, and almost everything about modern Alaska traces back to this small city on Resurrection Bay. On this walking tour, you'll hear how this remote outpost became the gateway to Alaska's interior – and why it still matters. You'll also learn how natural disasters, Indigenous history, and gold rush ambitions shaped one of the most consequential towns in the state.

The tour starts at the Mariner's Memorial near the small boat marina. You'll walk through a salmon spawning park, cross into the historic downtown, and follow Madison and Adams Streets past buildings that date back to Seward's founding years between 1903 and 1906. Along the way, you'll hear how the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake – magnitude 9.2 and the second largest ever recorded – collapsed Seward's entire waterfront into Resurrection Bay, and how the city rebuilt itself further from the shore.

You'll also discover how a diphtheria outbreak in Nome in 1924 turned Seward into the starting point for a life-saving sled dog relay that inspired the Iditarod. The tour ends at the Alaska Sea Life Center, a marine rehabilitation aquarium built largely with funds from the Exxon Valdez oil spill settlement.

On this roughly 45-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how William Henry Seward bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for just 2 cents an acre
• Learn about the Alutiiq people, who navigated these waters in baidarkas long before European settlers arrived
• Visit the Resurrect Art Coffee House, a 1916 Methodist church turned funky café and gallery
• Explore the Van Gilder Hotel, listed on the National Register of Historic Places – and haunted, allegedly, by room 202's former occupant
• Discover how 13-year-old Benny Benson, living in a Seward orphanage, designed the Alaska state flag in 1927
• See the former Alaska Railroad depot at Mile 0, where the line to Fairbanks began

Seward rewards curiosity, so pause wherever something catches your eye – there's more history per block here than almost anywhere else in Alaska.