Most of Cordova’s attractions are of the outdoors variety, but you should save a little time to rummage through the town’s past at the Cordova Historical Museum.This colorful little community museum has surprising depth for its size. A random sampling of its idiosyncratic collection includes: an old nickel slot machine that still works (bring nickels); a rare, three-man, skin bidarka (aka, a kayak), blackened with age like a mummy; and the peephole from Gloria’s Box Car, a famous local box car of ill repute. The people of Cordova bring things to the museum when they don’t know what else to do with them. That’s why it’s got the taxidermied remains of a 600-pound leatherback turtle, a tropical species that made some serious navigational errors and wound up in a fisherman’s net in Prince William Sound. Jars filled with foul-smelling oil from the Exxon Valdez keep showing up, too. “Every time someone digs at the beach and finds that layer of oil down there, they bring some,” said the woman volunteering at the museum when I visited. “They’re still furious and they just want to let someone know.” Buy postcards and sign 'em with an oily brown thumb print.
- Frommer's Staff