Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve was part of our 2014 trip to Alaska.
We drove into the Wrangell area, and what I most remember is the vast and distant everything felt. This is not an easy part to access. Roads are limited and distances are long. Most of the park is still reached by small plane, which gives you the sense that you are only ever on the edge of it.
Wrangell-St. Elias was established in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, and at over 13 million acres, it is the largest national park in the United States. It is so large that it contains entire mountain ranges, massive glaciers and even the preserved remains of a historic copper mining town.
One of the most striking aspects of this park is that it holds nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the United States, a reminder that this is a landscape defined by extremes: height, distance and scale.
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