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.
Today Valdez is a working harbor and a glacier town — fishing boats and tankers, cruise decks and heli-ski runs, all under the Chugach peaks. Its story runs from the Spanish naming and the 1898 gold rush through the Richardson Highway, the 1964 quake and the move to firmer ground, and the pipeline years. Our Valdez, Alaska designs gather that identity into wearable form — the bear, the glacier, the gold-rush grit. Valdez, AK — the Little Switzerland of Alaska, at the head of the Sound.
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.
