National Parks:
Kenai Fjords National Park

Seward, Alaska -- A stately spruce and cottonwood forest, thick with ferns and shrubs, gives a visitor few clues that Kenai Fjords National Park is a young and dynamic landscape, its seemingly quiet nature a sometimes dramatic work in progress.

Established as a national monument in 1978, Kenai Fjords became a national park two years later as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The story of the landscape is much more ancient. The park is topped by the more than 300,000 acre Harding Icefield, a relic of the last ice age when ice covered much of North America. That ice is still in flux, with glaciers generally retreating along the park coast, uncovering glacially carved valleys that fill with sea water to form the stunning fjords for which the park is famous.

Park visitors can see the evidence of glacial action on commercial day boat tours along the park coast and at Exit Glacier, a 9-mile drive off the Seward Highway. In the headquarters town of Seward, about 125 miles from Anchorage, the park visitor center has exhibits about the formation of the landscape, marine life and visitor opportunities.

DID YOU KNOW

• The Kenai Fjords coast is geologically very active as the Pacific Plate slips under the North American Plate. This usually slow movement is dragging the Kenai Mountains into the sea, deepening the fjords. Sometimes the action is dramatic: In 1964, the Good Friday Earthquake dropped the shoreline six feet in under 4 minutes!
• Worms -- ice worms -- exist on frozen glacial surfaces.
• Thirty-two glaciers flow down from the icefield, fed by storms which drop hundreds of inches of snow at the high elevations of the Harding Icefield.
• Driving to Exit Glacier is like a drive back in time. A few miles from the glacier face, the forest is thick and mature. The landscape changes to hardy alders and willows dominate as you approach the glacier. And at the edge of the glacier, bare rock and a few pioneer plants -- mosses, lichen and fireweed -- gain toeholds in the skimpy soil.

DON'T MISS ATTRACTIONS

• Exit Glacier has a new nature center which opened in May. It provides orientation to the Exit Glacier valley, and is a great first stop as visitors walk the roughly half-mile to the face of the glacier. A small campground is nearby.
• Public use cabins are available for rent in some of the fjords and are popular with kayakers and private boaters. In the winter, there's a public use cabin available at Exit Glacier.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PRIORITIES

• A partnership with the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward has been underway for several years, with the park and center cooperating in the formation of the Ocean Alaska Science and Learning Center and other projects. The center is supporting research and education projects related to coastal bears, oystercatchers, harbor seals, archaeology and other topics in and near the national park.
• Visitor facilities at Exit Glacier have had significant improvements in the last three years, culminating with the opening this year of the nature center. Power for the center is provided through a propane-fueled fuel cell, an innovative power source made possible through a partnership with the Propane Research Council, the University of Alaska and others.

Source: National Park Service