Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Most of Klukwan was built recently: 3% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1978. Below: 6 old photos and papers, maps from 1954 on, and the census since 1880.
The Klukwan post office opened in 1920, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Chilkat (1890), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
From Wikipedia’s history of Klukwan.
Klukwan began as a Chilkat Tlingit village along the trade route later known as the Dalton Trail. In 1880, the U.S. Navy reported the name of the village as "Chilcat of Klukquan". The name is Tlakw Áan in Tlingit, meaning roughly "forever village" due to its antiquity. Klukwan is the only remaining of five Chilkat villages that were in the area before 1900.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveYéil X'eenh (Raven Screen)
In the archiveWhale house plank fragment
In the archiveChilkat Indians watching Klukwan Potlatch ceremony, Alaska, October 11, 1898
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey3 decades in the archive, from the 1810s to the 1890s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Klukwan. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Klukwan.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Klukwan’s page.
Retake this view · +15Between 87 and 565 people in every census since 1880.
14 censuses, 1880–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Klukwan’s Wikipedia page.
Klukwan had its own post office from 1920 to 1963. Another post office, Chilkat, opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
The Klukwan post office opened in 1920, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
c. 1810
c. 1810
1898