Things To Do in Valdez

This unique museum is full of Alaskan objects out of context—at first it seems a mishmash of arrow heads, animal trophy mounts, Native crafts, and much else—but there is a unifying theme. Everything was collected by the Whitneys, a pioneer couple who owned a roadside rock shop, and…

When the pink salmon return from late June to early August, they swarm on the hatchery in a blizzard of fish. The hatchery releases more than 200 million pinks and 2 million silvers (or coho) each year. There is no stream for the salmon to return to, so they try to get back into the…

History has been busy in this little town, with the gold-rush hoax that birthed it, the early road link that gave it life, the 1964 earthquake that leveled it, the oil pipeline that enriched it, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill that made it infamous. The museum makes the most of it all…