50 Fun Facts About Denali National Park

Denali is the highest mountain on which continent?

Denali, in Alaska, is the highest peak in North America; the park and preserve around it cover more than six million acres of Interior Alaska.

How high is Denali's summit, according to the 2015 survey?

The 2015 USGS survey measured Denali's summit at 20,310 feet, ten feet below the 1953 figure; its roughly 18,000-foot rise from base to summit exceeds Everest's.

What name did the park carry from 1917 until 1980?

The park opened in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park; the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act merged it with the surrounding national monument and renamed the enlarged unit Denali National Park and Preserve.

What does 'Denali' mean in the Athabaskan language?

In Koyukon Athabaskan the mountain is Deenaalee, 'the high one'; Alaska's geographic names board adopted Denali in 1975, four decades before the federal government did the same.

Which president directed the Interior Secretary to officially rename the mountain Denali in August 2015?

Barack Obama announced the change on 30 August 2015, on the eve of an Alaska visit, and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell signed the order; a January 2025 executive order reversed it for the peak but not the park.

Which conservationist first proposed a national park around Denali?

Charles Sheldon, a hunter-naturalist, campaigned through the Boone and Crockett Club for a game refuge around the mountain; Alaska delegate James Wickersham carried the bill, and the park was created in 1917.

Which president signed the bill creating the park on 26 February 1917?

Woodrow Wilson signed the act on 26 February 1917; Congress appropriated no money for the new park until 1921, so it went four years without a single employee.

Which president visited the park in July 1923 while touring the Alaska Railroad?

Warren G. Harding rode the new Alaska Railroad north, drove its golden spike at Nenana on 15 July 1923 and stopped at the park's rail station; he died in San Francisco on 2 August.

Who made the first verified ascent of Denali's true summit on 7 June 1913?

Archdeacon Hudson Stuck organised the expedition, Harry Karstens led the climbing, and Harper and Tatum completed the party that reached the true summit on 7 June 1913; Stuck's book The Ascent of Denali followed in 1914.

Who was the first person to actually set foot on Denali's summit in 1913?

Walter Harper, whose mother was Koyukon Athabaskan, led the final steps and was first on top; he died in October 1918 when the steamer Princess Sophia sank near Juneau.

Which explorer's 1906 claim to have reached the summit is widely regarded as a hoax?

Frederick Cook claimed he and packer Ed Barrill reached the top in September 1906; his summit photograph was later shown to be of a minor bump on the Ruth Glacier, some 19 miles from the true summit.

What did the 1910 'Sourdough' miners carry to the top of Denali's north peak as proof?

Billy Taylor and Pete Anderson hauled the 14-foot spruce pole up the north peak on 3 April 1910 to fly a flag they hoped Fairbanks could see; the 1913 first-ascent party spotted it, and it was never seen again.

Who pioneered the West Buttress route up Denali in 1951?

Bradford Washburn led the first ascent of the West Buttress in 1951 after picking out the line from his aerial photographs; it became the standard route, replacing the longer Muldrow Glacier approach from the north.

How many climbers died in the 1967 blizzard on Denali, one of the deadliest US mountaineering accidents?

Seven members of the 12-man Wilcox expedition died high on the mountain in a July 1967 storm; the Park Service considered closing Denali to climbing afterwards but kept it open.

Where must climbers register and attend an orientation before attempting Denali?

Every climber checks in at the Talkeetna Ranger Station, the hub of Denali mountaineering; ski-equipped air taxis then fly parties from Talkeetna's airstrip onto the glaciers at about 7,200 feet.

How long is the Denali Park Road, the only vehicle route into the park?

The Park Road runs 92 miles west from the park entrance; only the first 15 miles, to Savage River, are paved and open to private cars, with park buses carrying visitors beyond.

The Park Road took how many years to build before its completion in 1938?

There was no road to the park entrance at all until the Denali Highway opened in 1957; visits jumped from 5,000 to 25,000 in two years.

Why was the Park Road closed beyond Mile 45 from August 2021?

Crews had been dumping 100 truckloads of gravel a week to keep it open; the closure at Polychrome Pass was expected to last until at least summer 2027.

What share of visitors are commonly said to actually see the mountain?

Only about 30 percent of visitors get a clear look at the peak, a group the park calls the '30 Percent Club'; the mountain is so high that it makes its own clouds and weather.

What clever feature does the Eielson Visitor Center have for cloudy days?

The etching on the glass facing the peak shows exactly where Denali would be if you could see it; the centre sits at Mile 66, four hours in by bus.

What is unique about the working dogs kept at park headquarters?

Sled dogs have patrolled the park since 1922 to deter poachers; rangers still mush Alaskan huskies in winter and give demonstrations in summer.

What is the longest glacier in the park and in the whole range?

The Kahiltna Glacier runs about 44 miles down the south side of the range and hosts the climbers' base camp; the Ruth Glacier's Great Gorge holds ice some 3,800 feet thick.

Roughly what share of the park is covered by glaciers?

Glaciers cover about 16 percent of the park, roughly a million acres; the south side of the range carries most of the ice because moist Gulf of Alaska air drops its snow there first.

What is the 'Drunken Forest' on Denali's lower slopes?

Freeze-thaw cycles make the soil slide; near-surface permafrost has already dropped from about 75 percent of the park in the 1950s to around 50 percent.

Roughly how many grizzly bears live on the north side of the Alaska Range in the park?

Park biologists put the north-side grizzly population at 300 to 350; with few salmon in the silty rivers, these bears feed mainly on roots, berries and ground squirrels and stay smaller than coastal grizzlies.

Which white-coated animal appears on the park's America the Beautiful quarter?

The Denali quarter, 15th in the America the Beautiful series, shows a Dall sheep standing before the mountain; the rams' curled horns make them a favourite sighting along the Park Road.

What is the tree line elevation in the park, above which most of it is tundra?

Tree line sits at only about 2,500 feet in the park, so spruce and willow cling to the lowlands around Wonder Lake while most of the land above is open tundra.

What is the park's only amphibian?

The wood frog is the park's only amphibian; it survives winter frozen solid, with glucose acting as antifreeze in its cells, and thaws out to breed in spring.

In 1992, Christopher McCandless died in an abandoned bus on which trail near the park?

Christopher McCandless died in Fairbanks City Transit bus 142 on the Stampede Trail in August 1992; the bus, made famous by Into the Wild, was airlifted out in 2020 to the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

The Denali Fault, which runs the length of the park, is what type of fault?

The Denali Fault is a right-lateral strike-slip fault, the far side moving to the right as you face it; its November 2002 rupture shifted the ground about 14 feet at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which was built on sliders and held.

Fossil trackways in the park's Cantwell Formation show it was once a migration point for which animals?

Therizinosaur and hadrosaur tracks date from the Late Cretaceous, when the area was wet with marshes and ponds.

What rock forms the core of Denali and explains why it stays so high?

The biotite granite of the McKinley pluton resists erosion; most of Alaska arrived as exotic terranes that were welded onto the continent.

Which road, completed in 1971, gave the park direct links to Anchorage and Fairbanks?

The George Parks Highway, finished in 1971 between Anchorage and Fairbanks, passes the park entrance; it is named for George Parks, territorial governor of Alaska from 1925 to 1933.

What did the park do in 1972 in response to the sudden surge in visitors?

Visitors have taken tour and shuttle buses into the interior ever since; the East Fork transit bus lets hikers hop on and off.

Which president proclaimed Denali National Monument in December 1978?

Jimmy Carter used the Antiquities Act on 1 December 1978 to proclaim Denali and 14 other Alaska national monuments; the 1980 Alaska lands act folded the monument into today's park and preserve.

What can people do in the 'preserve' portion that they cannot do in the park proper?

Sport hunting is allowed in the preserve but not in the park; local rural residents may take game for subsistence in the 1980 park additions, though never in the original 1917 wilderness core.

The oldest archaeological site in the park, on the Teklanika River, dates to about when?

The Teklanika West site dates to about 7130 BC, roughly 9,000 years ago, when hunters camped on a bluff above the river to watch for game; most of the park's known sites are similar short-stay hunting camps.

Which settlement at the far end of the Park Road, a six-hour bus ride, has backcountry lodges and an airstrip?

Kantishna, a gold-mining camp founded in 1905 at the end of the road, now holds a handful of backcountry lodges and a gravel airstrip; Wonder Lake lies a few miles short of it.

Who became the park's first female superintendent in 2022?

Brooke Merrell was named superintendent of Denali in 2022 after serving as its deputy and acting superintendent, the first woman to hold the post since the park's creation in 1917.

In which year was the park's first known fatal bear attack, on a lone hiker photographing a grizzly?

Richard White, a 49-year-old from San Diego, was killed in August 2012 along a backcountry river; his camera showed he had stayed within about 50 yards of the grizzly for at least eight minutes, far closer than rules allow.

How many wolves were park biologists monitoring in 2014?

Surveys put caribou at about 2,230 and moose at nearly 1,500; lynx, wolverines and Arctic foxes are present but rarely seen.

Kettle lakes near Wonder Lake and Polychrome Overlook formed how?

Ice-wedge polygons, another cold-climate feature, can be seen about three-quarters of a mile south of the road near Mile 49.

Which town about 11 miles north of the park entrance sits along the main highway?

Healy, about 11 miles north of the entrance on the main highway, grew up around the Usibelli coal mine, Alaska's largest, and offers motels and fuel for park visitors.

Which of these rivers flows through the park's northern valleys?

The McKinley, Toklat and Foraker valleys lie north of the range; buses stop at the Toklat River contact station at Mile 53.

In which year were the park's 14 log ranger patrol cabins listed on the National Register?

Fourteen log patrol cabins, built mostly in the 1920s and 1930s as winter shelters for dog-team patrols, were listed on the National Register in 1986; each sits roughly a day's mushing from the next.

Denali National Park and Preserve is roughly the size of which US state?

At just over six million acres, about 9,500 square miles, Denali National Park and Preserve is almost exactly the size of New Hampshire; the original 1917 core, about a third of the total, is designated wilderness.

Who first named the mountain after William McKinley in 1897?

William A. Dickey chose the name for the newly elected president; the federal government adopted it when Wilson created the park in 1917.

In which year was Denali designated an international biosphere reserve?

UNESCO listed the park as an international biosphere reserve in 1976, among the first batch of US sites in the programme, for its largely intact subarctic ecosystem.

What magnitude was the November 2002 earthquake centred 30 miles east of the park?

The 3 November 2002 earthquake measured magnitude 7.9; it ruptured the surface for more than 200 miles along the Denali and Totschunda faults and sloshed water out of lakes as far away as Louisiana, yet killed no one.

Roughly how many caribou did surveys estimate in the park in 2013?

The Denali caribou herd numbered about 2,200 in 2013, a shadow of the 20,000 or so that roamed the area in the early 1940s; the herd winters mostly in the park's northwest lowlands.