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.
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.
