Ketchikan's long rebuild of the road toward Saxman inches ahead, with a waterside path and a tangle over land

Ketchikan's years-long project to rebuild the South Tongass Highway toward Saxman — and add a path along the water for walkers and cyclists — drew another federal installment this month, part of a rebuild whose price tag has proven hard to pin down and whose route runs into a thicket of land it doesn't yet own.

The new money is about $2.3 million from the Federal Highway Administration, most of it the latest of ten obligations to the Saxman-to-Surf Street stretch of the highway, which has now drawn roughly $8.4 million over time. A companion project widening the road from Deermount Street to Saxman has pulled in about $7.2 million more. Together they're pieces of a corridor the state has been reworking in stages.

The plan is substantial: rehabilitating and widening about three miles of highway, fixing its alignment and drainage, and building a new recreational path on the water side of the road running from the Coast Guard base to Saxman — the kind of pedestrian and bike route the region has wanted. Construction is anticipated to start in 2026.

The cost, though, is a moving target. The state's own materials put the work anywhere from $10 million to $20 million in one place to $40 million to $50 million in another, and project documents flag scope, cost and land impacts as unsettled. Much of the uncertainty is the path itself: threading it along the waterfront means acquiring numerous parcels of private land, and the state has committed to more public involvement over those right-of-way challenges. At a February state meeting, one speaker called it a "pretty important project for the region," noting a "big right-of-way component that's ongoing right now, lots of parcels to obtain."

The smaller piece of this month's money, about $1.25 million, is unrelated — a safety project at the Stedman and Deermount intersection in Ketchikan, adding lighting and a sidewalk bulbout at a crosswalk.