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.
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.
