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.
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.
