Juneau
Going to Juneau and not seeing the Mendenhall is like visiting Rome and skipping the Colosseum. The most famous of Juneau’s ice floes, and the city’s most…
Juneau
Going to Juneau and not seeing the Mendenhall is like visiting Rome and skipping the Colosseum. The most famous of Juneau’s ice floes, and the city’s most…
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Alaska
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a 30,625-sq-mile wilderness in Alaska’s northeast corner, straddling the eastern Brooks Range from the treeless…
Southeast Alaska
Welcome to the largest national forest in the US, a tract of land almost the size of Ireland and significantly larger than adjacent Wrangell-St Elias…
Valdez
This is the star glacial attraction in Prince William Sound – a large sea inlet named by British colonizers after a young English prince in the eighteenth…
Southeast Alaska
Just 30 miles north of Yakutat is Hubbard Glacier, the largest tidewater glacier in North America. The 8-mile-wide frozen behemoth is easily Alaska’s most…
Sitka National Historical Park
Sitka
This mystical juxtaposition of tall trees and totems is Alaska’s smallest national park and the site where the Tlingits were defeated by the Russians in…
Denali National Park & Preserve
The Interior
In our collective consciousness, Alaska represents the concept of the raw wilderness. But that untamed perception can be as much a deterrent as a draw…
Anchorage
This world-class facility is Anchorage’s cultural jewel. The West Wing, a four-story, shimmering, mirrored facade, adds 80,000 sq ft to what was already…
The Interior
Some 18,000 years ago this glacier covered the entire area where the city of Palmer sits today. It must have appeared a supernatural force back then,…
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park Museum & Visitor Center
Skagway
The recently improved NPS center is in the original 1898 White Pass & Yukon Route depot. The center is spread over two interconnecting buildings. One…
Anchorage
If you can't travel to the Bush region to experience Native Alaska culture firsthand, visit this 26-acre center and see how humans survived – and thrived …
Seward
A fitting legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil-spill settlement, this $56-million marine research center is more than just one of Alaska’s finest attractions…
Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park
Kodiak Island
This military fort, 4.5 miles northeast of Kodiak, off Monashka Bay Rd, was built by the US Army during WWII to defend against a Japanese invasion that…
University of Alaska Museum of the North
Fairbanks
In an architecturally abstract, igloo- and aurora-inspired edifice sits one of Alaska’s finest museums, with artifact-rich exhibits on the geology,…
Concentration Mill & Leaching Plant
The Interior
Like a rickety fantasy hatched out of a lunatic's dream, this 14-story building once processed the copper mined out of the surrounding mountains. You can…
Alaska Islands & Ocean Visitor Center
Homer
More a research facility and museum than a visitor center, this impressive place has numerous cool interactive exhibits. The best is a room that’s a…
The Interior
It's hard to miss Mukluk Land. The entrance, after all, is marked by a giant red boot. But more importantly: you shouldn't miss Mukluk Land. Is it a theme…
Homer
There’s lots of local art and Alaska Native artifacts, but a more impressive feature is the interactive displays on the area’s wildlife, designed to…
Saxman Native Village & Totem Park
Ketchikan
On South Tongass Hwy, 2.5 miles south of Ketchikan, is this incorporated Tlingit village of 475 residents. It's best known for Saxman Totem Park, which…
Sitka
East of downtown along Lincoln St, the Russian Bishop’s House is the oldest intact Russian building in Sitka. Built in 1843 by Finnish carpenters out of…
Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage & Bald Eagle Preserve Visitor Center
Haines
Part of a welcome renaissance in Tlingit art and culture in Alaska, this heritage center is located in the ancient native village of Klukwan, 22 miles…
Southeast Alaska
This impressive museum is what the colorful history and characters of Wrangell deserve. As you stroll through the many rooms, an audio narration…
Valdez
This lovingly curated museum includes an ornate, steam-powered antique fire engine, a 19th-century saloon bar and the ceremonial first barrel of oil to…
Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository
Kodiak Island
The Alutiiqs (not to be confused with the Aleuts) are the subject of this brilliant Alaska Native museum. They were the original inhabitants of the Kodiak…
Ketchikan
For a crash course in Southeast Alaska's impressive totem art look no further than the Totem Heritage Center, where old poles brought from deserted…
Aleutian Islands
This small but impressive museum is one of the best native cultural centers in Alaska. It relives the Aleutian story from prehistory through the Russian…
Aleutian WWII National Historic Area
Aleutian Islands
In 1996 Congress created this 134-acre national historic area to commemorate the bloody events of WWII that took place on the Aleutian Islands. Most of…
Denali National Park & Preserve
What makes 20,310ft Denali (formerly Mt McKinley) one of the world’s great scenic mountains is the sheer independent rise of its bulk. Denali begins at a…
Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve
Alaska
Standing in the middle of this park's eight million acres of uninhabited mountains and tundra, you could be forgiven for assuming a woolly mammoth was…
Alaska
At 4739ft, the Atigun Pass is the only road pass through the Brooks Range. We'd call it 'dramatic,' but that's sort of like calling the Sahara sandy; the…
Homer
Generally known as ‘the Spit,’ this long needle of land – a 4.5-mile sandbar stretching into Kachemak Bay – is viewed by some folks as the most fun…
Talkeetna
Though not an official museum, the Fairview Inn might as well be. Founded in 1923 to serve as the overnight stop between Seward and Fairbanks on the newly…
Treadwell Mine Historical Trail
Juneau
It's hard to envisage today, but the Treadwell mine on Douglas Island was once the largest gold mine in the world, set up like a minitown with its own…
Katmai National Park & Preserve
Southwest Alaska
Sure, Katmai National Park & Preserve encompasses four million acres of rippling coastline, volcanic landscapes and mountain-fringed lakes, but the brown…
Independence Mine State Historical Park
Anchorage Region
The main attraction of Hatcher Pass is 272-acre Independence Mine State Historical Park, a huge, abandoned gold mine sprawled out in an alpine valley. The…
Juneau
As far as cable cars go, this tramway is rather expensive for a five-minute ride. But from a marketing point of view its location couldn’t be better. It…
Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge
Fairbanks
Birds have been migrating through this idyllic little stretch of farmland for millennia, and when the local dairy finally shut its doors, the community…
The Interior
‘Oh no, they destroyed this valley!’ If you’re like 99% of visitors, that’s exactly what you’ll think as you reach Kennecott and look across the…
Sitka
Built between 1844 and 1848, this church stood for more than 100 years as Alaska’s finest Russian Orthodox cathedral. When a fire destroyed it in 1966,…
Southeast Alaska
Twenty miles north of Hyder and back inside Canada lies the fifth-largest glacier in Canada (and the largest in the world accessible by road). The old…