Columbia Glacier
The glacier’s retreat since 1980 exposes fjord geometry while calving ice shapes marine navigation and wildlife habitat.
United States: places and wildlife — page 18
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Tracy Arm
Granite walls, hanging valleys, harbor seals, ice, and the Sawyer glaciers create a long marine sequence rather than one viewpoint.
Matanuska Glacier
Crevasses, meltwater, moraine, blue ice, and an active terminus reveal glacier mechanics at ground level.
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
The bore forms only when large Cook Inlet tidal swings, timing, wind, and channel geometry align.
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
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
The roughly eight-mile round trip gains about 3,000 feet through rapidly changing ecological zones.
Flattop Mountain Trail
Tundra, broad Cook Inlet views, and the Chugach front range make the mountain accessible without making it easy.
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
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
The trail passes mill-town remains and forest before reaching debris-covered ice, blue pools, and views toward Stairway Icefall.
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
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
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
Roots, boardwalk, steep forest, muskeg, and subalpine terrain compress several Southeast Alaska environments into a short horizontal distance.
Angel Rocks Trail
The loop climbs through spruce and birch to weathered rock towers, open ridges, and Interior views.
Granite Tors Trail
The route climbs from Chena River forest through burn and tundra to isolated tors sculpted by frost.
West Glacier Trail
The municipal trail climbs through wet forest, bedrock, and side routes above the lake’s west shore.
Alaska Botanical Garden
Rock gardens, peonies, herbs, wildflowers, heritage vegetables, art, and boreal forest show what northern horticulture can accomplish.
Georgeson Botanical Garden
Eight cultivated acres at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm test crops and ornamentals under extreme light and cold.
Jensen–Olson Arboretum
Nationally significant Primula collections, rhododendrons, vegetables, meadow, and forest grow between mountains and Favorite Channel.
Alaska SeaLife Center
Seabirds, seals, sea lions, fish, invertebrates, touch pools, laboratories, and rehabilitation work interpret Alaska’s cold-water ecosystems without disguising the institution’s scientific mission.
Alaska Zoo
Polar bear, Amur tiger, musk ox, wolves, moose, birds, and rescued wildlife occupy a wooded hillside rather than a formal urban promenade.
Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center
Bears, wood bison, musk ox, elk, wolves, moose, and other Alaska wildlife occupy a 1.
Musk Ox Farm
A nonprofit herd, calves, research, fiber production, and agricultural interpretation show musk oxen as more than distant tundra icons.
Sitka Sound Science Center
Touch tanks, local fish, a wolf eel, hatchery systems, laboratories, and a historic hydroelectric building connect public learning with active coastal science.
Bishop Museum
Hawaiʻi’s largest museum places Hawaiian and Pacific histories beside active natural-science research, without separating cultural knowledge from the islands that shaped it.
Honolulu Museum of Art
Arcaded courtyards and intimate galleries connect exceptional Asian and Pacific holdings with European, American, and contemporary art made in and beyond Hawaiʻi.
Capitol Modern
Capitol Modern presents changing exhibitions from Hawaiʻi’s artists and the state collection inside the former Armed Services YMCA, directly beside the Capitol district.
Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design
Shangri La combines a 1930s Honolulu residence with Islamic art, architectural fragments, gardens, and contemporary commissions overlooking the Pacific.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum
Historic Hangars 37 and 79 hold aircraft, engines, personal stories, and visible battle damage on Ford Island, inside the active Pearl Harbor military environment.
Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum
The USS Bowfin, launched one year after the Pearl Harbor attack, anchors a museum about American submarine warfare, technology, crews, and the Pacific campaign.
Lyman Museum and Mission House
The Lyman Museum joins volcanic geology, shells, ecosystems, cultural history, and a restored 1839 mission house in central Hilo.
Kauaʻi Museum
Kauaʻi Museum focuses tightly on the island group rather than compressing all of Hawaiʻi into one narrative.
Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House
Hale Hōʻikeʻike presents Maui artifacts, photographs, maps, surfboards, paintings, and archival material in the 1833 Bailey House and its grounds.
Grove Farm Homestead Museum
Grove Farm preserves the Wilcox family home, furnishings, offices, gardens, and working landscape associated with Kauaʻi’s sugar economy.
Kona Coffee Living History Farm
This living-history farm uses an intact farmhouse, coffee orchard, mill, drying deck, garden, and daily demonstrations to interpret family-scale Kona coffee production.
Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum
The Sugar Museum documents plantation agriculture, irrigation, milling, labor, immigration, camps, and community life beside the former Puʻunēnē mill.
ʻIolani Palace
Built for King Kalākaua and Queen Kapiʻolani, ʻIolani Palace is the only official royal residence in the United States and a central place for understanding the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Pearl Harbor National Memorial
The memorial’s museums, waterfront, remembrance circle, and USS Arizona program interpret the attack on Oʻahu and its consequences through artifacts, testimony, strategy, and named lives.
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau preserves temple platforms, fishponds, carved kiʻi, royal grounds, and the refuge protected by the massive Great Wall.
Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site
Puʻukoholā Heiau was built in the early 1790s as Kamehameha consolidated power, using an immense dry-laid stone platform above Kawaihae Bay.
Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park
Kaloko-Honokōhau protects two major fishponds, fishtrap engineering, house sites, petroglyphs, wetlands, reef, and trails across young lava north of Kona.
Lapakahi State Historical Park
Lapakahi’s self-guided loop crosses the remains of a partially restored Hawaiian coastal settlement in North Kohala.
Pāʻulaʻula State Historic Site
Pāʻulaʻula preserves the earth-and-stone outline of an early nineteenth-century fort near the Waimea River, long labeled “Russian Fort Elizabeth.”
Queen Emma Summer Palace
Hānaiakamalama served as a mountain retreat for Queen Emma, King Kamehameha IV, and their son Prince Albert.
Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives
The site preserves the 1821 Mission House, Chamberlain House, reconstructed printing office, archives, and grounds beside Kawaiahaʻo Church.