Glacier Bay National Park - Alaska

Established December 2, 1980

3,280,198 acres

When Capt. George Vancouver sailed the Alaska coast in 1794, Glacier Bay did not exist. It lay beneath a sheet of glacial ice several miles wide and thousands of feet thick. Since then, in one of the fastest glacial retreats on record, the ice has shrunk back 65 miles to unveil new land and a new bay, now returning to life after a long winter's sleep.

Scientists call Glacier Bay a living laboratory for the grand processes of glacial retreat, plant succession, and animal dynamics. It is an open book on the last Ice Age. At the southern end of the bay, where the ice departed 200 years ago, a spruce-hemlock rain forest has taken root. Farther north, in areas more recently deglaciated, the land becomes rugged and thinly vegetated.

The bay branches into two major arms, the west arm and Muir Inlet, which themselves branch into smaller inlets. There, on slopes deglaciated 50 to 100 years ago, alder and willow grow, while mosses, mountain avens, and dwarf fireweed pioneer areas exposed within the last two or three decades.

The new vegetation creates habitats for wolves, moose, mountain goats, black bears, brown bears, ptarmigan, and other wildlife, and the sea supports a food chain that includes salmon, bald eagles, harbor seals, harbor porpoises, humpback whales, and killer whales— all in an environment less than 200 years old.

Roughly 13 tidewater glaciers still flow into the park. In part because of variations in snow accumulations, most glaciers in the eastern and southwestern areas of the bay are receding, while several on its west side are advancing. The glaciers calve icebergs that hit the water with a sound like cannon-shot. "White thunder," the Tlingit Indians called it, the awesome voice of glacial ice. An iceberg's color often reveals its makeup; dense bergs are blue, while those filled with trapped air bubbles are white.