Ward Cove Pulp Mill – Ketchikan, AK

Once the industrial soul of Ketchikan, this place is slowly being swallowed back by the wild.

The Ward Cove Pulp Mill rose in the 1950s, turning Southeast Alaska’s old-growth timber into pulp and paper that traveled the globe. At its height, it employed hundreds of workers and fundamentally altered the shoreline — an entire way of life built around its towering smokestacks.

It shut down in 1997. What’s left is steel, concrete, and quiet — rust creeping beneath moss, rain softening the edges, the forest steadily taking back what was once taken from it.