Our Valdez design carries a black bear beneath an arched VALDEZ and the line Alaska Territory · Est. 1959, printed in a worn, woodcut style. The bear is the Alaska of the backcountry — the wild, mountain-and-glacier country the town is set into — and the 1959 date marks Alaska statehood. It reads like an old outfitter's stamp: not a cruise-ship souvenir, but the mark of the glacier town at the end of the fjord, the Little Switzerland of Alaska.
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.
