Valdez is Mother Nature’s Year Round Playground with a spectacular mix of tidewater glaciers, rain forests and mountains. Valdez enjoys a year round temperate climate, which offers unparalleled recreational opportunities throughout the year. After you see the breathtaking mountain scenery, experience wildlife and glacier viewing in Prince William Sound, sail or kayak the Sound, you will understand that even Mother Nature has her favorites.
Valdez Visitor Bureau at 200 Chenega Ave. 907-835-2984. Open 8am to 8pm
Valdez (pronounced "val DEEZ") was the center for the massive oil-spill cleanup after the "Exxon Valdez" disaster in March of 1989. Overnight this tiny serene community was changed
into a frenzied center of activity not unlike the turn-of-the-century gold rush camp which started the town.
You can reach Valdez by road, sea or air. Paved highways join Valdez and Fairbanks, 364 miles/586 km away, and Anchorage 305 miles/491 km distant. Alaska ferryliners connect Valdez directly with Whittier, Cordova. There are scheduled flights between Valdez and Anchorage which are only 120 air miles apart.
History Miners and supply packers founded the community of Valdez at the turn of
the century. In 1899, a pack trail was opened from the town to the gold fields in the upper Yukon basin and became Alaska's first highway, the Richardson.
It had several names as it was known first as the Eagle Trail, and later as Valdez-Fairbanks Wagon Road.
Hard-hit by the 1964 earthquake, Valdez was left perched precariously on a ledge shaped perfectly for a future landslide.
Rather than abandon their town, Valdez residents elected instead to simply move it—literally—four miles away. They chose a rock-firm area which had been suggested as an alternate location for the town in 1911.
Some moved their older homes but most have built modern, contemporary structures.
