Spanish ships charted these waters first: in 1790 the explorer Salvador Fidalgo named the port for Antonio Valdes y Basan, a Spanish naval minister. Long before that, the Chugach (Sugpiaq) and Ahtna peoples knew this coast as a trade crossroads at the edge of the Sound. The town itself was born of gold — founded in 1898 as a port of entry for prospectors bound for the Klondike, who climbed the brutal Valdez Glacier Trail toward the Interior. It was "Copper City" before it was Valdez, and it incorporated in 1901.
The land around Valdez is the draw. The Columbia Glacier, the second-largest tidewater glacier in North America, calves icebergs into the Sound just west of town; glacier and wildlife cruises run beneath the peaks. Inland, Thompson Pass is one of the snowiest places in the United States — three hundred-plus inches a year — and a world-class heli-ski destination, while Keystone Canyon drops the threads of Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls beside the old gold-rush trail. In 1977 the first tanker left the marine terminal here, the southern end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
Why People Visit Valdez, AK
People come to Valdez for the scale of it — tidewater glaciers calving into the Sound, peaks straight off the harbor, and snow measured in feet. It is a gold-rush town turned glacier port, the Little Switzerland of Alaska, rugged and beautiful and welcoming at the end of the road from Anchorage.
