Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve

The marine wilderness of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve includes tidewater glaciers, snow-capped mountain ranges, ocean coastlines, deep fjords, and freshwater rivers and lakes. This diverse land and seascape hosts a mosaic of plant communities and a variety of marine and terrestrial wildlife and presents a number of opportunities for adventuring and learning about this unique and powerful place.

 
Dynamic Change
Glacier Bay's story is one of dynamic change in the wake of dramatic glacial movements

• Glacier Bay collects a number of glaciers flowing from the tall surrounding mountains with abundant snowfall.
• As recently as 1750 a single glacier thousands of feet thick filled what is now a 65-mile long fjord.
• This glacial retreat has exposed a resilient land that hosts a succession of marine and terrestrial life.
• Here is an opportunity to see how the physical world shapes the biological.

 
Natural Laboratory
Botanist William Cooper spearheaded efforts to preserve not only a place to view glaciers, wildlife, and grandeur, but also a living laboratory to study and enjoy through the ages.

• Glacier Bay offers unexcelled opportunities to study earth's most fundamental geologic processes.
• A center where scientists from multiple disciplines collaborate to conduct management and ecosystem directed research
• What researchers learn at Glacier Bay may one day foretell changes to the region and the world.

 
Place of Hope
Glacier Bay is a globally significant marine and terrestrial wilderness sanctuary.

• A place that offers human solitude and a remote wildness that is rapidly disappearing in today's world.
• A place of hope--for the continued wisdom, restraint, and humility to preserve a sample of wild America, the world as it was.
• It is part of one of the largest internationally protected Biosphere Reserves in the world, and it is recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site

 
Place of Inspiration
Long before there were written records of Glacier Bay, there were stories.

• Tlingit elders told of an ancestral homeland covered by advancing ice. For the Tlingit, Glacier Bay is woven into the tapestry of their lives.
• Glacier Bay is a powerful place that also inspires cultural expression in the scientist, the artist, the resident, the traveler, and those who make their livelihood from the sea.
• Glacier Bay continues to offer inspiration as we each endeavor to explore our connections to this dynamic landscape.

 
Write to
PO Box 140
Gustavus, AK 99826-E-mail Us

Phone
Headquarters, General Information
(907) 697-2230

Recreational Permit Information
(907) 697-2627
Fax
(907) 697-2654

Climate
Summer temperatures average 50 to 60 degrees F (10 to 15 degrees C). Winter temperatures rarely drop into the single digits, with average nighttime lows of 25 to 40 degrees F (-2 to 5 degrees C). Rain is the norm in southeast Alaska. April, May and June are commonly the driest months of the year. September and October tend to be the wettest.
 Did You Know?
Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, opened its doors to the first students in July 1881, only four months after Booker T. Washington first arrived in Tuskegee. Posted by: Gracy    Source