National Parks in AK

Alaska contains 20 sites that are administered by the National Park Service (National Monuments, National Historic Sites, National Preserves, etc.)

Included in that number are 8 sites with the highest designation, that of National Park.
While this is pretty amazing in and of itself, consider the following:

• Alaska contains the U.S.’s largest national park, Wrangell-St. Elias, with more than 8 million acres
  

• Alaska also contains 7 of the 10 largest national parks in the nation

• The largest national park in the lower 48, Death Valley in California, only ranks #5 on the list

• Yellowstone ranks #8 – behind 6 Alaska parks; Wrangell-St. Elias is nearly 4 times the size of Yellowstone!

Wrangell-St. Elias


Greatest AND Least!
On the other end of the spectrum, Alaska also contains the least visited national park, Kobuk Valley. Accessible only by foot, dogsled, snowmobile, and chartered air taxis, it received only 847 visitors in 2007.

Not surprisingly, Alaska has 5 of the 10 least visited national parks. Also on the list are Lake Clark (#2 with 5500 visitors); Gates of the Arctic (#4 with 11,000 visitors); Wrangell-St. Elias (#8 with 61,000 visitors) and Katmai (#10 with 83,000 visitors).






Katmai








Note: National Park units we expect to visit on our expedition are Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (in Skagway) and Glacier Bay National Park.