Katmai Wilderness Lodge

Set on the Alagnak River outside King Salmon, Katmai Lodge has occupied its present site since 1980, after the original camp a few miles downstream outgrew a borrowed cabin. Every plank, pot and provision once arrived by barge from Seattle, unloaded at Naknek and ferried upriver by the lodge's own boats. That effort built the Main Lodge, the Sockeye Lodge and the kitchen first; eighteen more buildings followed over the decades. Eight guest lodges now sit along the riverbank, from the seven-bedroom Grayling to the single-suite Sockeye, each with its own bathroom and none shared between groups. Several, including Rainbow and Brown Bear, were fully renovated in 2014 and 2015. The Chinook Lodge remains the gathering point. Guests return there each evening for happy hour, an honor bar and a slideshow of the day's catches. Guides work in small ratios, one for every two or three anglers, and lead trips for salmon, char and trout on the river or by flyout to Brooks Falls for bear viewing. Meals run buffet-style, with a riverside barbecue lunch built around whatever guests land that day. It is a working fishing camp, not a resort. Caretakers stay through the Alaskan winter to keep the place standing for the next season, when the lodge reopens to the anglers and photographers who make up most of its returning guests.