Portrait of a Place Series

Alaska is a state of vast open spaces, rolling tundra hills, wilderness without roads, rain forests, amazing wildlife, spectacular mountains, and more coast than the rest of the United States combined.

Southeast Alaska's lush rain forests and Glacier Bay National Park line the Inside Passage that receives many cruise ships each summer at ports of call like Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan.

South central Alaska includes the state's largest city, Anchorage, scenic Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords National Park near the town of Seward.

From Fairbanks, stretches the great Interior where a journey to the south brings you to Denali National Park and Preserve, home to North America's highest mountain and where views of moose, grizzly bear, caribou and wolves delight visitors. To the north, the mighty Yukon River, one of 3,000 rivers in the state, flows 1,400 miles across central Alaska.

The vast Arctic coast sustains polar bears, whales, walruses, seals and caribou as well as Inupiat Eskimos, part of Alaska's 120,000 Native peoples whose ancestors have lived in the Great Land from long before when explorer Vitus Bering first spied Alaska's coastline.

Alaska

by Fred Hirschmann