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VALDEZ |
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VALDEZ , 304 road miles from Anchorage and the northernmost ice-free
port in the western hemisphere, lies at the head of a fjord that reaches
inland twelve miles from Prince William Sound. Known as "Little
Switzerland" due to its stunning backdrop of steep mountains, glaciers
and waterfalls, and a record annual snowfall of over forty feet, Valdez
(pronounced val-Deez ) offers great hiking, rafting, sea kayaking,
wildlife-viewing and, of course, fishing.
The 1890s Gold Rush transformed Valdez from a remote whaling station
into a flourishing settlement, when thousands of prospectors arrived to
head over the deadly Valdez and Klutina glaciers on the Valdez Trail to
the mines in the Yukon. Only three hundred of the 3500 miners who set
out made it to the goldfield - those that did not perish from frostbite
and starvation gave up. Valdez came to depend on fish canneries, logging
and occasional military use for its economic survival, and nature
conspired to finish it off on Good Friday 1964: the epicenter of North
America's largest earthquake was just 45 miles away. Shockwaves turned
the ground to quivering jelly, snapping roads, toppling buildings and
killing 33 residents. However, the citizens of Valdez refused to be
intimidated, and moved sixty-odd buildings to the more stable present
site four miles away.
The town's fortunes rose again during the 1970s, when oil was found
beneath Prudhoe Bay, and Valdez became the southern terminus of the 800-mile
trans-Alaska pipeline , which carries up to two million barrels of oil
per day. Although winds and tides ensured that no oil from the Exxon
Valdez made it into the port of Valdez, ironically the spill triggered
an economic boom for the city as it was the most accessible site from
which to direct the massive cleanup . The operation, which lasted into
1991, cost Exxon and the government over one hundred billion dollars,
and called on eleven thousand workers in over one thousand boats and
three hundred planes to scour the beaches.
The Town and around
The Valdez Museum , 217 Egan Drive (summer daily 8am-6pm; $3), carries
just the right amount of detail on the Gold Rush, glaciation, the oil
pipeline that supports the town's economy, and a display on the oil
spill; and an annex |
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