As the gold rush faded, Valdez became a supply port and transport hub. In 1919 the Richardson Highway — Alaska's first road — linked it to Fairbanks, and the deep, ice-free harbor kept the town working year round: it is the northernmost ice-free port in North America. The mountains that wall it in catch staggering snow, and the Sound beyond it fills with calving ice.
The town that moved. On Good Friday, March 27, 1964, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America struck Prince William Sound. An underwater landslide and the wave that followed swept away the Valdez waterfront, with lives lost at the dock. The ground the old town stood on was judged too unstable to rebuild, so over the next few years Valdez did something few towns have ever done: it picked itself up and moved about four miles to firmer ground, where it stands today. The story of Valdez is not the disaster — it is the rebuilding.
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.
