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Alaska, United States: places and wildlife — page 2

Browse the published Explore collection for Alaska, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.

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Oscar Anderson House Museum

Oscar Anderson House Museum

One modest frame house restores domestic scale to Anchorage’s founding boom, grounded in 1915 frame house and anderson family

Wickersham State Historic Site

Wickersham State Historic Site

Judge James Wickersham’s 1898 house holds diaries, photographs, furniture, and stories from courts, Congress, Denali climbing, and the campaign for an Alaska university.

Eklutna Historical Park

Eklutna Historical Park

The park’s brightly painted burial houses, old log church, newer church, and village history show a distinct Dena’ina Orthodox tradition.

Big Delta State Historical Park

Big Delta State Historical Park

Rika’s Roadhouse, outbuildings, the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail, and Tanana River crossing preserve the logistical world that preceded the Richardson Highway.

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

The preserve protects Serpentine Hot Springs, lava fields, archaeological landscapes, and living Iñupiat connections to the region once joined with Asia.

Kenai Fjords National Park

Kenai Fjords National Park

The Harding Icefield, tidewater glaciers, seabird colonies, forests, and coastal waters reveal connected climate and ocean processes.

Katmai National Park and Preserve

Katmai National Park and Preserve

Brooks River bear viewing is only one concentrated window into a park shaped by the 1912 Novarupta eruption, lakes, coast, and longstanding Sugpiaq presence.

Kobuk Valley National Park

Kobuk Valley National Park

The Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, Kobuk River, Onion Portage archaeology, and Western Arctic caribou herd make a surprising landscape where desert-like forms are built by glacial sediment and wind.

Chugach State Park

Chugach State Park

Coastal mudflats, alpine ridges, boreal forest, glaciers, lakes, and wildlife spread across multiple trail systems rather than one central entrance.

Kachemak Bay State Park

Kachemak Bay State Park

The roadless park combines Grewingk Glacier, alpine lakes, coastal forest, marine travel, cabins, and small trail systems reached mainly by water taxi.

Denali State Park

Denali State Park

The state park spreads along the Parks Highway with Kesugi Ridge, Byers Lake, river access, campgrounds, and broad Alaska Range views.

Wood–Tikchik State Park

Wood–Tikchik State Park

Wood-Tikchik protects a vast Bristol Bay watershed used for salmon, subsistence, paddling, sport fishing, and remote camping.

Caines Head State Recreation Area

Caines Head State Recreation Area

Beaches, rainforest, coves, Fort McGilvray, cabins, and marine travel combine history with a route whose lower sections can disappear at high tide.

Mendenhall Glacier

Mendenhall Glacier

The glacier, iceberg-filled lake, Nugget Falls, salmon streams, and young succession landscape make climate change visible without requiring ice travel.

Exit Glacier

Exit Glacier

The road-accessible tongue of the Harding Icefield sits above outwash, alder, cottonwood, and exposed bedrock that record rapid landscape change.

Brooks Falls

Brooks Falls

Falls, platforms, trails, fish runs, and strict movement rules create one of the world’s best-known bear-viewing systems.

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

Novarupta’s deposits, welded tuff, river-cut canyons, and distant volcanic walls remain stark even after the original fumaroles faded.

Hubbard Glacier

Hubbard Glacier

A vast ice front fed from the Saint Elias Mountains calves into Disenchantment Bay and has repeatedly dammed Russell Fjord.

Columbia Glacier

Columbia Glacier

The glacier’s retreat since 1980 exposes fjord geometry while calving ice shapes marine navigation and wildlife habitat.

Tracy Arm

Tracy Arm

Granite walls, hanging valleys, harbor seals, ice, and the Sawyer glaciers create a long marine sequence rather than one viewpoint.

Matanuska Glacier

Matanuska Glacier

Crevasses, meltwater, moraine, blue ice, and an active terminus reveal glacier mechanics at ground level.

Worthington Glacier

Worthington Glacier

Short paths and viewpoints below Thompson Pass expose moraine, rock, snow, and changing ice without claiming safe glacier access.

Turnagain Arm Bore Tide

Turnagain Arm Bore Tide

The bore forms only when large Cook Inlet tidal swings, timing, wind, and channel geometry align.

Misty Fjords National Monument

Misty Fjords National Monument

Sea cliffs, lakes, waterfalls, estuaries, forest, and long inlets create a landscape understood through boat or floatplane movement.

Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve

Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve

The Chilkat’s unusual groundwater and channel system keeps feeding areas open late in the year, supporting a spectacular eagle gathering within Tlingit homeland.

Harding Icefield Trail

Harding Icefield Trail

The roughly eight-mile round trip gains about 3,000 feet through rapidly changing ecological zones.

Flattop Mountain Trail

Flattop Mountain Trail

Tundra, broad Cook Inlet views, and the Chugach front range make the mountain accessible without making it easy.

Crow Pass Trail

Crow Pass Trail

The long traverse follows part of the Iditarod National Historic Trail past Crow Pass, Raven Glacier, waterfalls, and an unbridged Eagle River crossing.

Kesugi Ridge Trail

Kesugi Ridge Trail

Rolling tundra, granite outcrops, tarns, and broad Alaska Range views make the route less technically severe than many Alaska traverses but no less exposed.

Root Glacier Trail

Root Glacier Trail

The trail passes mill-town remains and forest before reaching debris-covered ice, blue pools, and views toward Stairway Icefall.

Savage Alpine Trail

Savage Alpine Trail

The trail climbs quickly to open ridge views, patterned ground, Dall sheep habitat, and changing perspectives on the Alaska Range.

Mount Marathon Trail

Mount Marathon Trail

The famous Fourth of July race route climbs loose forest, roots, scree, and a direct mountain chute, while hikers often use the longer Jeep and Bench trails.

Lost Lake Trail

Lost Lake Trail

The route moves from spruce through hemlock into open tundra and lake country, with options for an out-and-back or point-to-point using the Primrose side.

Deer Mountain Trail

Deer Mountain Trail

Roots, boardwalk, steep forest, muskeg, and subalpine terrain compress several Southeast Alaska environments into a short horizontal distance.

Angel Rocks Trail

Angel Rocks Trail

The loop climbs through spruce and birch to weathered rock towers, open ridges, and Interior views.

Granite Tors Trail

Granite Tors Trail

The route climbs from Chena River forest through burn and tundra to isolated tors sculpted by frost.

West Glacier Trail

West Glacier Trail

The municipal trail climbs through wet forest, bedrock, and side routes above the lake’s west shore.

Alaska Botanical Garden

Alaska Botanical Garden

Rock gardens, peonies, herbs, wildflowers, heritage vegetables, art, and boreal forest show what northern horticulture can accomplish.

Georgeson Botanical Garden

Georgeson Botanical Garden

Eight cultivated acres at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm test crops and ornamentals under extreme light and cold.