Page 159 - Vacation Country Travel Guide

Chistochina began as an Ahtna Athabaskan fish
camp and a stopover place for traders and trappers.
The village access road later became part of the
Valdez-Eagle Trail, constructed by miners during
the gold rush to the Eagle area in 1897. Chistochina
Lodge was built as a roadhouse for prospectors. The
Trail was used for construction of U.S. Army Signal
Corps telegraph lines from Valdez to Eagle between
1901 and 1904.

AT SLANA
JCT. TOK CUT OFF 1 & NABESNA ROAD
TO WRANGELL-ST. ELIAS

Slana Glenn Highway
Location: At the head of the Nabesna Road on photo by:
VC TRAVEL GUIDE
Glenn Highway #1/Tok Cut-off; 65 miles south
of Tok and 60 miles north of Glennallen.
Station is located at Mile 33 of the Edgerton Hwy; Richardson Highway #4
The area along the Nabesna Road offers good phone: (907) 823-2205. The Slana Ranger Station is The first major road built in Alaska, the 360-mile
fishing and hiking and provides access to Wrangell-St located at start of the Nabesna Road near Slana on long Richardson Highway runs as Alaska Route 4
Elias National Park. Information is available from the Hwy 1; phone: (907) 822-5238. from Valdez to Delta Junction and as Alaska Route
National Park Service Ranger Station at Slana. The Yakutat Ranger Station is located in the 2 from there to Fairbanks. In 1898, to provide an
town of Yakutat, accessible only by boat or plane, in “all-American” route to the Klondike gold fields, the
Wrangell-St. Elias Tongass National Forest to the southeast of the Park; US Army constructed a 409-mile pack trail from the
phone: (907) 784-3295.
port of Old Valdez (which lay about 4 miles east of
National Park and Preserve present-day Valdez prior to being destroyed in the
Wrangell-St. Elias is located in the extreme AT GLENNALLEN 1964 Good Friday Earthquake) to Eagle near the
southeast corner of the state along the Alaska/Yukon JCT. GLENN HWY 1 / TOK CUT OFF & Yukon border. After the rush ended, the Army kept
boundary and is bordered in part on the west by RICHARDSON HWY 4 SOUTH TO VALDEZ & the trail open in order to connect its posts near the
Richardson Hwy #4, Edgerton Hwy #10 and Tok PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND two towns.
Cutoff/Glenn Hwy #1. The region is characterized by The 1902 Fairbanks gold rush and the construction
remote mountains and valleys, gigantic glaciers, wild
rivers and an abundant variety of wildlife. Together
with the three contiguous preserves of Glacier Bay
National Park, Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park and
Kluane National Park, this United Nations designated
World Heritage Site encompasses over 24 million
acres, the largest internationally protected terrestrial
ecosystem on the planet.
The Chugach, Wrangell and St. Elias mountain
ranges converge here with the eastern end of the Alaska
Range in what is often referred to as the “mountain
kingdom of North America.” A day’s drive from
Anchorage, the biggest National Park in the country
encompasses the continent’s largest assemblage of
glaciers and nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the
US. At over 18,000 feet, Mount St. Elias is second in
height only to Denali, while Mt. Wrangell is one of
the largest active volcanoes in North America. One of
many, the Malaspina Glacier flows out of the St. Elias
range in a mass larger than Rhode Island; trees sprout
and grow to maturity in the silt on top of the glacier.
Only two roads lead directly into the park: Nabesna
Road, a 45-mile gravel road that begins at Slana, and
the Edgerton Hwy/McCarthy Road, which is accessed
from the Richardson Hwy, 81 miles north of Valdez.
The Park has six visitor contact points staffed by
professional interpretive rangers who can assist with a
variety of services. The Wrangell-St. Elias NP Visitor
Center is located at Mile 106.8 on the Richardson
Hwy #4 between Glennallen and Copper Center;
phone: (907) 822-7440. Open year round, the Center
has a theater, exhibits, a nature walk and bookstore.
In the town of McCarthy at the end of the McCarthy
Road leading east from Chitina on the Edgerton Hwy,
a National Park Service kiosk is open daily in the
summer. Five miles beyond McCarthy, the Kennecott
Visitor Center is located in the historic general store at
the site of the Kennecott National Historic Landmark.
Kennecott includes the land, mining claims and mill
town that formed the foundation of Kennecott Copper
until 1938 when the site closed. The Chitina Ranger
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