Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Kake Kake, AK

Kake is a first-class city in Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, on the northwest coast of Kupreanof Island in the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska.

The city's name comes from the Tlingit word Ḵéex̱ʼ, derived from ḵée, meaning dawn or daylight, and x̱ʼé, meaning mouth, so it means mouth of dawn or opening of daylight.

The 2020 census counted 543 residents in 188 households in Kake, down from a peak of 710 in 2000.

Kake first appeared on the 1880 census as the Tlingit village of Keex Kwaan and formally incorporated on November 3, 1951.

Kake is the headquarters of the Organized Village of Kake, a federally recognized Tlingit tribe, and the Ḵéex̱ʼ Kwáan people have lived in the region for thousands of years.

In the February 1869 Kake War, the USS Saginaw destroyed three deserted villages and two forts near present-day Kake.

On September 25, 2024, the U.S. Navy formally apologized to the people of Kake for the destruction of the village in 1869.

Kake is home to a 128-foot totem pole, one of the world's largest, carved in 1967 for the Alaska Purchase centennial.

A town sign calls Kake The Town that Never Sleeps, and at 57 degrees north it does not experience true polar night, with about 17 hours of darkness at the winter solstice.

Kake has a mayor-council form of government composed of a mayor, six council members, and a city manager.