Things to Do in Alaska, United States: City Guides

The best things to do in Alaska begin with understanding its scale. The northernmost, westernmost and, by longitude, easternmost state in the United States stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific, with a maritime border across the Bering Strait and Canada along its eastern side. Its history, communities and ways of travelling have all been shaped by distance, wilderness and water. Neywo has free audio guides for 7 cities in Alaska, covering 145 narrated places in total through 6 walking tours.

What to see and do in Alaska

Alaska is too large to experience as a single city break. Its towns and cities offer different ways into the state’s history, Indigenous cultures, transportation networks and relationship with the landscape.

Anchorage

About half of Alaska’s residents live in the Anchorage metropolitan area, making it the state’s largest concentration of people. It is a useful starting point for exploring the state’s modern history and cultural variety.

Neywo’s Anchorage guide includes 38 narrated places. The Alaska Aviation Museum reflects the importance of air travel in a state where many communities have no road or highway access. The Alaska Museum of Science and Nature and the Anchorage Museum offer further perspectives on the region, while the Alaska Native Heritage Center connects visitors with Indigenous cultures and traditions.

Explore Anchorage to discover its narrated places.

Fairbanks

Fairbanks lies in Alaska’s Interior, an area marked by enormous distances and largely uninhabited wilderness. The city’s places tell stories connected with local institutions, transport and the state’s development.

The 6 narrated places in Neywo’s Fairbanks guide include Lacey Street Theatre, the Pioneer Air Museum, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and the Harding Railroad Car. The Alaska Railroad, built around 1915, played an important role in the state’s twentieth-century development, while bush air services remain essential for many communities beyond the road system.

See Fairbanks with its audio guide.

Juneau

Juneau is one of the places that shows how Alaska’s history is layered. Russian colonization, American expansion, mining and the state’s later development all form part of the wider story.

Neywo’s guide includes 27 narrated places, among them the J. M. Davis House, Alaska State Centennial Museum, Juneau-Douglas City Museum and Last Chance Mining Museum. Gold rushes brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska, leaving mining as an important part of the state’s historical memory.

Discover Juneau through its historic places.

Ketchikan

Ketchikan lies in the southeast, in the area known as the Panhandle or Inside Passage. This part of Alaska is connected with coastal travel and the cultural traditions of the communities that live among its islands and waterways.

The city guide covers 14 narrated places, including First Lutheran Church, the Totem Heritage Center, the Gilmore Building and The Star. The Totem Heritage Center is particularly relevant to Alaska’s broader cultural story: Indigenous peoples have lived in the region for thousands of years, and Alaska has the highest proportion of Native Americans of any state in the country.

Walk through Ketchikan with Neywo.

Sitka

Sitka offers another view of the southeast and of Alaska’s Russian and Indigenous heritage. The Russian Empire began actively colonizing the region in the eighteenth century, and Russian America eventually covered most of what is now Alaska.

Neywo’s Sitka guide includes 35 narrated places. Its highlighted locations include the Russian Bishop’s House, Gold Island, Kirushkin Island and Makhnati Island. The city’s history belongs to a much larger story that includes Indigenous communities, Russian America and the eventual sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867.

Explore Sitka and its narrated history.

Homer

Homer provides a way to approach Alaska through its coastal environment. The state faces the Pacific Ocean to the south, and the sea has long influenced movement, work and settlement.

The Homer guide includes 2 narrated places: the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies and the Pratt Museum. Together, they provide an entry point into the relationship between Alaska’s communities, wildlife and coastal landscapes.

Visit Homer with a self-guided audio tour.

Talkeetna

Talkeetna is one of the smaller Alaskan destinations available on Neywo. Its guide includes 23 narrated places, with locations such as the Susitna River Bridge, Wasilla Community Hall, Houston and Palmer.

The places connected with Talkeetna also reflect the distances between Alaskan communities. Across the state, some towns and villages are linked by sea, river or air rather than by roads. Others can be reached only by air, on foot, by dogsled or by snowmachine.

Discover Talkeetna at your own pace.

Alaska’s history and culture

Indigenous peoples lived in Alaska for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The region is widely believed to have been an entry point for the initial settlement of the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge. The name Alaska came through Russian from an Aleut expression meaning “the mainland”; more literally, it refers to “the object toward which the action of the sea is directed.”

Russian America was expensive and difficult to maintain from such a distance, so Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. Gold rushes later brought miners and settlers, and Alaska entered the Union as the forty-ninth state in 1959.

That history remains visible in the state’s languages, music and celebrations. English is spoken in most homes, alongside Spanish, Tagalog, other Asian languages and other Indo-European languages. Traditional Alaska Native music stands alongside folk music brought by immigrants from Russia and Europe.

Local events also show the variety of Alaskan life. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race runs from Anchorage to Nome, while Fairbanks hosts the World Ice Art Championships. Ketchikan celebrates a Blueberry Festival and an Alaska Hummingbird Festival; Sitka holds Sitka Whale Fest; and Wrangell hosts the Stikine River Garnet Fest. Dog mushing, once a form of transportation, has been more closely associated with sport since the middle of the 1920s.

Explore Alaska with Neywo

Neywo offers free audio guides for 7 Alaskan cities, with 145 narrated places in total and 6 walking tours. Narration is available in 11 languages. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule.

Download Neywo to explore Anchorage, Fairbanks, Homer, Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka and Talkeetna while walking through Alaska’s history and communities.