On the Wrangell dock, it is often children who greet passengers, their little tables covered with raw garnets taken from a deposit bequeathed to the town's youth a century ago. The image sets the tone: this community of 2,000 residents, set at the northern tip of the island of the same name in Southeast Alaska, welcomes ships without artifice. The landing opens directly onto Front Street, the main street, and everything that matters can be reached on foot, on level ground, without detours.

Four flags, one port

Wrangell holds a distinction unique in Alaska: the town has lived under four successive authorities. Tlingit territory first, then a fortified Russian post, then a British trading post leased to the Hudson's Bay Company, and finally an American town after the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Three gold rushes then funnelled prospectors and adventurers heading up the Stikine River through its harbour. The Nolan Center museum unfolds this rich history with remarkable Tlingit collections and stories of the fishing and timber years that shaped the residents' straightforward character.

Chief Shakes Island

In the middle of the small boat harbour, a wooden footbridge leads to a tiny islet where the clan house of Chief Shakes stands, surrounded by totem poles. Restored with the help of Tlingit carvers, the community house bears witness to the power of the chiefs who once controlled trade on the Stikine. The site is less than ten minutes' walk from the dock; even when closed, it is worth the detour for the beauty of the carvings and the calm of the basin where fishing boats are reflected.

Carvings thousands of years old

A kilometre and a half north of the landing, a boardwalk leads down to Petroglyph Beach, where some forty pre-contact petroglyphs emerge among the rocks. Spirals, faces and sea creatures may be up to 8,000 years old; you look for them at low tide, your gaze skimming the wet stone, and each discovery brings a little archaeologist's pride. The site is protected as a state historic park: visitors are simply asked not to rub anything and to tread carefully among the seaweed. Access is free, the walk easy, and the beach watches the ferries pass in the strait.

The Stikine, the bears and LeConte Glacier

Wrangell serves as a base camp for some of the most spectacular excursions in Southeast Alaska. Jet boats head up the Stikine delta, the largest wild, undammed river on the North American continent to reach the Pacific, between sandbars, seals and drowned forests. Other outings speed toward LeConte Glacier, the southernmost tidewater glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, whose fjord fills with blue icebergs. In July and August, the Anan observatory, reached by boat or floatplane with a permit, lets you watch black bears and grizzlies fishing for salmon in the same river, an extremely rare occurrence.

The call at a glance

• Docking downtown; no shuttle needed.
• Chief Shakes Island, museum and shops: less than 10 minutes on foot.
• Petroglyph Beach: 20-minute walk; check the tide tables.
• River excursions, LeConte and Anan: booking before the cruise is essential.
• The Mount Dewey trail climbs in 20 minutes to a wooded lookout above the rooftops.

What stays at the bottom of your pocket

Many travellers leave the island with a raw garnet at the bottom of their pocket, bought for two dollars from an enterprising kid. The stone sums up the place well: unpolished, but real. In a Southeast Alaska where some ports of call resemble one another, Wrangell keeps the unhurried pace of a fishing town that lives first and foremost for itself, and that is the memory that shines the longest.