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Flightseeing helicopter views of a turquoise river just north of Cordova.
Travel

10 Reasons to Visit Alaska

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Get Inspired For many people, a trip to Alaska is a once-in-a-lifetime dream fulfilled. For others, it’s a return to one of their favorite places on the planet. And some visit once and decide to make the state their home. There are reasons aplenty to come to the Great Land and explore: An abundance of wildlife, unique cultural experiences, and unparalleled scenery are just a few. Building time into your itinerary to relax and absorb the small delights is always a good idea, too—enjoying quirky cafes, strolling through a boat harbor, groovin’ to some live local music. And if you’ve never been here, we hope these photos nudge you to start planning. Who knows, in just a few short months, you could be watching humpback whales bubble-net feeding or be flightseeing around the summit of Denali. After all, every adventure starts with an inspiration. —Susan Sommer 1. A pair of…

Salmonfest is held early August in the small community of Ninilchik on the Kenai Peninsula.
Authentic Alaska

Rock On  

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10 Alaska summer music festivals that will get you groovin’  If winter has you restless, maybe it’s time to plan a roadtrip to one (or more) of Alaska’s summer music festivals. The lineup of multiday events has grown in recent years and offers both Alaskan and national acts exploring a range of genres. For Alaskans, the festivals are community celebrations that offer a break from summer’s busy pace. For visitors, they’re a chance to dive into a local scene, with great music against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery. Here’s a quick sampling of 2024 events. Alaska Folk Festival The music is mostly acoustic, but the atmosphere turns electric as hundreds of musicians descend on Juneau each April for this seven-day festival. It offers nine four-hour performances averaging 15 acts each, along with workshops. The music also runs late-night at bars, restaurants, and even street corners. If you come by ferry,…

Totem Bight State Historical Park in Ketchikan.
30-Second Reads

Alaska’s Unrivaled State Park System

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Big federal parks are a draw for many, but state parks are often local favorites. Alaska has over three million acres of state parks, more than any other state. Its 156 parks stretch from north of Fairbanks to Kodiak to the islands of the southeast panhandle. Some are small, like the 40-acre Halibut Point Recreation Area along Sitka’s road system. Others are sprawling, like the 1.6-million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park north of Dillingham, which with its clear-water lakes and soaring mountains is the largest state park in the country. Opportunities vary across the state park system. They include full RV hook-ups at the parks along the Alaska Highway between Fairbanks and Tok, or the remote wilderness of the 500,000-acre Chugach State Park outside of Anchorage, where you might see more moose than people. Some parks, like Totem Bight in Ketchikan, are set aside for historical purposes. Others, like the Alaska Chilkat…

Alaska’s gray whales
30-Second Reads

Alaska’s Gray Whales

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Species Spotlight Gray whales begin their return to Alaska each March. After wintering in their breeding grounds along Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, they swim alongside Alaska’s outer coast on their way to the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. In late March, they are often seen near coastal communities including Sitka and Seward. Gray whales roll onto their sides to stir up sediments on the ocean floor, which they then filter through their baleen to trap the small invertebrates that comprise the bulk of their diets. Each summer they eat enough to build fat reserves that last them through the winter months when they typically do not feed. Alaska’s gray whales were hunted nearly to extinction by 1900 but had recently rebounded to about 26,000 animals. However, since 2019 NOAA Fisheries has tracked an “unusual mortality event” involving the deaths of potentially thousands of gray whales. Surveys in 2022 showed low birth rates…

Culture

Documentaries capture life in Sitka

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Chuck Miller in episode 16 of the 14 Miles project. Courtesy 14 Miles. Despite how they might be labeled, people living in rural America lead complex lives and develop dynamic communities. The documentary project 14 Miles is a series of short three- to five-minute videos that aim to shine a light on some overlooked stories in the remote community of Sitka, which takes up a roughly 14-mile stretch of land in Southeast. The 37 videos in the project’s library include a profile of a young woman’s past trauma, a behind-the-scenes look at the town thrift store, and a snapshot of community gatherings. “It’s about what we celebrate and care about living in a small Alaska community, but it’s also about the challenges,” says Ellen Frankenstein, who led the project. The episodes are available on 14miles.org and through video streaming platforms including Vimeo and YouTube.

Culture

Celebrating Fourth of July Alaska style

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Parade on Nome’s Front Street, 1916. Courtesy Library of Congress Loving liberty, Americans honored their nation’s birth in Alaska when it was still foreign soil. Two years before the United States bought the territory from Russia, the Western Union Telegraph Expedition’s Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Henry P. Fisher arranged its first July Fourth bash in the capital New Archangel, present-day Sitka. As guest of the Russian governor, Fisher had tired of the outpost’s routine and diet. The Brooklyn exile decided to celebrate Independence Day stylishly, helped by two supply vessel captains anchored in port. He requested the customary gun salutes and received Russian-American Company officials and their wives and daughters for a light meal on Clara Bell’s quarterdeck. Before music and dancing commenced, they all toasted Lincoln and the Tsar. Elegant shipboard dining continued to mark the anniversary: a Depression-era feast-day menu for the Inside Passage on SS Aleutian—a steamer considered “palatial”—boasted…

Wildlife & Nature

Catch and Release

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I just landed in Sitka after leaving Haines, where I spent two lovely weeks in the Valley of Eagles. While bald eagles are everywhere in Haines, they’re also everywhere in Southeast, including Sitka. Still, there’s a difference between them: we’ll call it the lazy factor. Haines eagles are spoiled. I visit them in November during the end of the chum run. The chubby birds wait for a salmon to flop close to shore, and then they drag it up onto the rocks and feast on it. Or, they steal a fish from another eagle already dining on one. Their young also have easy access to meals, and don’t need to rely on mom and dad to bring food back to the nest as they mature. The eaglets don’t have to learn to dive into the water to fly off with a struggling fish in their talons. They just have to…

Authentic Alaska

Alaska’s Oldest Photograph

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Historic photos show early Alaska The earliest photo in the Alaska state archives is from 1868, a year after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia.  The photo is a landscape of Sitka, and is one of many taken by Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer who was hired by the government to travel with a party inspecting Alaska’s military posts and harbors. The oldest known photograph of Alaska, however, is not in the state archives. It is part of the University of California Berkeley’s Bancroft Library collection, and was taken by Charles Ryder, a photographer who traveled through Alaska two years prior, in 1866, as part of a Western Union expedition evaluating the possibility of a polar telegraph line. Ryder’s earliest photo shows three people standing in front of a wooden building, possibly a store because of a sign on top. In the background, an impressive Alaskan mountain rises from…

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