Alaskan Park Landscapes
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska, covers 3.3 million acres of mountains, glaciers, temperate rainforest, coastlines, and fjords. The park is part of a 25-million acre World Heritage Site in one of the world.
Alaska is home to the largest national parks in the country with a combined acreage of more than 32 million in only eight parks. Mt. McKinley National Park was the very first established in 1917 and was later combined with the Denali Wilderness to become the Denali National Park and Preserve. The largest of Alaska’s parks and all of the parks in the United States is the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve with over thirteen million acres of mountains and volcanic peaks covered with glaciers. This park and preserve were established through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter, which set aside more than 100 million acres for the National Park Service.
