By Travis Robbins, Legends LLC CEO

My business partner Mark Sivertsen and I spent years in emergency response. He was the police chief, and I was the fire chief at the Ketchikan Airport. When we started thinking about life after those jobs, we asked ourselves what else we were good at.

Drinking spirits came to mind. We decided to try making them.

In 2019, we bought an old fire station where we had once trained and began turning it into Uncharted Alaska Distillery. We opened in 2022, after COVID complicated our plans.

Since then, Tiger Johnson has joined us and helped grow the business. Under our Legends umbrella, we now have a distillery and winery, with a brewery in the works. Tiger brought years of Ketchikan tourism experience to a group that has never been short on ideas.

Our rule is that if something sounds fun, we’ll give it a serious look. That’s how we ended up making spirits inspired by Alaska stories, including the Hairy Man, our version of Bigfoot. It’s also how we got interested in making alcohol from kelp grown near Ketchikan. We use the kelp in our spirits and send material left over from production to a company growing potatoes. If all goes to plan, those potatoes can become alcohol, too. We like a project that gives an ingredient a second round.

Cruise visitors get to see what we’re doing up close. On our distillery tour, guests learn how we make spirits, then head to what we call the classroom. They choose a spirit and add herbs, spices and other ingredients to make their own bottle. It takes a week or two for the flavors to infuse, so they bring it home. Some make several bottles for friends and family. I’d like to think at least one gets opened before they finish telling everyone about their Alaska trip.

Visitors make that experience possible. Ketchikan is a great place to build a business, but our year-round population is small. Cruise passengers give us customers for tours as well as our products. They help us hire dozens of local people and try ideas that might otherwise stay ideas.

Take our 4D theater. Mark and I dreamed up an Alaska adventure that would let guests feel like they were flying through the state. With Tiger and a group of friends willing to take a chance on it, we helped turn that idea into a theater featuring a production made by Alaskans. It’s the sort of experience you might expect to find at a major theme park. We thought Ketchikan deserved one, too. It also happens to be indoors, which is useful around here, given the rain.

Without cruise visitors, we couldn’t have built that theater. But what we do in summer matters in winter, too. Cruise season feels like drinking from a fire hose; the off-season is more of a garden hose.

We made a promise to stay open year-round because we want downtown Ketchikan to have life after the ships leave. Tiger has helped us expand distribution, which supports that commitment.

I know busy port days can be frustrating. I drive downtown, too. We need safer crossings and better ways for people to get around. Those are real problems, and we should work on them.

I also see what visitors make possible: local jobs, a livelier downtown and room for Ketchikan businesses to offer something you won’t find at every other port. I don’t want our town to be remembered for the same T-shirt someone could buy anywhere. I want people to meet the folks making things here, hear a few Alaska stories and leave with one of their own.

If that story involves a bottle they made in an old fire station, even better.

After years as a police officer and firefighter, Travis Robbins turned to his family’s winemaking roots at Homer’s Bear Creek Winery for inspiration. He opened Uncharted Alaska Distillery in Ketchikan, the first venture under what became Legends.