A mark-recapture experiment was used in 1993 to estimate abundance of chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) age 1.3 and older returning to the Chilkat River, near Haines, Alaska. One hundred sixty-one (161) large (age 1.3 and older) chinook salmon were captured in gill nets between June 1 and July 22, 1993. The mean date of the immigration was July 3. One hundred fifty-nine (159) of these fish were tagged with solid-core spaghetti tags. Between 29 July and 4 September, 614 large chinook salmon spawning in the Chilkat River drainage mostly on the Kelsall and Tahini rivers were inspected for tags to estimate abundance. A modified Petersen model (n1 = 159, n2 = 614, m2 = 21) was used to estimate that 4,472 (SE = 851) chinook salmon age 1.3 and older returned to the Chilkat River drainage in 1993. An unknown number of these fish died of natural causes or were caught in a subsistence fishery prior to spawning. The population estimate is not significantly different from the estimate for large chinook salmon in 1991 (5,897 plus or minus 1,005) and 1992 (5,204 plus or minus 935).