56 Fun Facts About Glacier Bay National Park

Glacier Bay National Park lies in Southeast Alaska, just west of which state capital?

Juneau is about 60 air miles east of the park; there is no road to either the park or the capital, so both are reached by air or sea.

Which president proclaimed Glacier Bay a national monument in February 1925?

Coolidge acted under the Antiquities Act after a letter-writing campaign by the Ecological Society of America, over the objections of a federal agency that wanted the minerals kept open.

Which 1980 law turned Glacier Bay from a monument into a park and preserve?

ANILCA, signed on December 2, 1980, also enlarged the monument by 523,000 acres in the same stroke.

Which president used the Antiquities Act on December 1, 1978 to expand the monument to the Alsek River lands?

Jimmy Carter used the Antiquities Act on December 1, 1978 to protect some 56 million acres of Alaska while ANILCA stalled in Congress, adding the Alsek River lands to Glacier Bay.

Roughly how many acres do the park and preserve cover together?

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve covers about 3.3 million acres (3,283,000), including nearly 600,000 acres of protected marine waters.

Mount Fairweather, the park's tallest peak, sits on the border with which Canadian province?

Mount Fairweather straddles the Alaska-British Columbia border; at about 15,300 feet it is British Columbia's highest peak, with Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park on the Canadian side.

Which explorer named Mount Fairweather in May 1778, apparently for the unusually good weather he met?

Captain James Cook sighted and named Mount Fairweather on 3 May 1778; the name is ironic, since storms and cloud usually hide a summit that gets over 100 inches of precipitation a year.

In which year was Mount Fairweather first climbed, by Allen Carpé and Terris Moore?

A 1926 attempt on the West Ridge had failed at a steep notch; the 1931 party landed supplies at Lituya Bay and went up the Southeast Ridge instead.

In which year did the naturalist John Muir first visit Glacier Bay?

John Muir first reached Glacier Bay by canoe in October 1879 with the missionary S. Hall Young, seeking living glaciers to explain how Yosemite had been carved.

John Muir's Glacier Bay dispatches were eventually collected in which 1915 book?

The book came out the year after Muir died and helped make the Inside Passage a tourist route.

To which newspaper did John Muir send his Glacier Bay dispatches?

Muir's letters ran in the San Francisco Bulletin (the Daily Evening Bulletin); they made the bay famous enough that steamship tours were running up the Inside Passage by the 1880s.

When Vancouver's expedition reached Icy Strait in 1794, how thick was the ice wall blocking Glacier Bay?

Joseph Whidbey, master of Vancouver's Discovery, found Icy Strait choked with ice; the glacier filling the bay was more than 4,000 feet thick and up to 20 miles wide.

By John Muir's first visit, the ice had retreated about how far up the bay since 1794?

The retreat continued: by 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier had pulled back some 65 miles from the mouth of the bay.

Glacier Bay's ice pulled back some 65 miles between 1794 and 1916, a record described as what?

The 65-mile pullback between 1794 and 1916 is the fastest documented glacier retreat on record, exposing the fjord system that cruise ships sail.

Which explorer was the first European to explore the Glacier Bay coast on foot, reaching Lituya Bay in 1786?

Lapérouse anchored in Lituya Bay in July 1786, naming it Port des Français, and spent 26 days there trading with Native people who came by canoe each day.

What did the explorer who lost 21 men to Lituya Bay's currents in 1786 name the island at its centre?

The name means empty tomb; he built a memorial to the drowned men there. The bay's entrance is only about 500 metres wide and its currents run over five knots.

The 1958 Lituya Bay landslide wave stripped trees to what height above the bay?

The wave stripped trees to 1,720 feet (524 m) above the bay on the Gilbert Inlet spur, the highest tsunami run-up ever recorded, taller than the Empire State Building.

The Fairweather Fault, source of the 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake, is what type of fault?

The Fairweather Fault is a right-lateral strike-slip fault, part of the Queen Charlotte system; the 1958 magnitude 7.8 quake on it dropped about 30 million cubic metres of rock into Gilbert Inlet.

Howard Ulrich and his young son survived the 1958 Lituya Bay wave aboard which fishing boat?

Howard Ulrich and his young son rode out the wave aboard the Edrie; Ulrich turned into it, the anchor chain snapped, and the boat was swept shoreward and back into the bay, the only vessel to survive.

Between 1854 and 1958, how many tsunamis higher than 100 feet did Lituya Bay record?

They came in 1854, 1899, 1936 and 1958; the geologist who flew over the bay after the 1958 event put the odds of another at about 9,000 to 1.

The park takes its name from its glaciers, which number roughly how many?

The park holds about 1,045 glaciers, only about 50 of them named; most are terrestrial and have been thinning for decades.

Which is the only tidewater glacier in the bay's East Arm?

McBride Glacier is the last tidewater glacier in Muir Inlet, the East Arm, after the inlet's other glaciers retreated onto land; it lies about 40 nautical miles from Bartlett Cove.

Johns Hopkins Glacier is unusual among the park's tidewater glaciers for doing what since the 1920s?

Johns Hopkins Glacier has been advancing since the late 1920s, unlike most of the park's glaciers; it is fed by so many tributaries that its surface is striped with medial moraines.

In which year was Glacier Bay added to the cross-border UNESCO World Heritage Site?

UNESCO added Glacier Bay in 1992 to the cross-border World Heritage Site first inscribed in 1979 around Wrangell-St. Elias and its Canadian neighbour; Tatshenshini-Alsek joined in 1994.

Margerie Glacier is named after Emmanuel de Margerie, a geologist and geographer of which nationality?

Emmanuel de Margerie was a French geographer and geologist who visited the bay in 1913; the 21-mile glacier named for him is among the park's most active calvers.

About how much of Margerie Glacier's 350-foot terminus stands above the water?

About 250 feet of Margerie's face stands above the water and 100 feet lies below; the steep drop-off lets cruise ships come close enough to hear the ice crack.

Margerie Glacier ends in which inlet, sitting perpendicular to the Grand Pacific Glacier?

Margerie Glacier calves into Tarr Inlet at the head of the West Arm, beside the debris-covered Grand Pacific Glacier; the two fronts touched in the early 1990s before separating.

The park's outer coast, west of the Fairweather Range, faces which body of water?

West of the Fairweather Range the park's Outer Coast runs along the Gulf of Alaska, where Lituya Bay and Dry Bay open onto the open Pacific.

Which inlet closes to boats in early summer so harbor seals can pup on icebergs?

Johns Hopkins Inlet is closed to vessels from May into early summer each year because hundreds of harbor seals give birth and nurse pups on its floating ice.

The Alaska Marine Highway ferry links the park's gateway town with Juneau via which village on Chichagof Island?

Hoonah, the main village of the Huna clans on Chichagof Island, is the ferry's stop between Juneau and the park's gateway; its old cannery is the Icy Strait Point cruise stop.

What is the small gateway community at the mouth of Glacier Bay, excluded from the park boundary?

Gustavus, population about 650, sits on the flats at the bay's mouth just outside the park; its long runway was built by the Army in the Second World War.

Before the post office forced a name change in 1925, the park's gateway town was known as what?

There is still a big beach full of wild strawberries there, and many residents descend from the Parker family who homesteaded it in 1917.

Which Native people regard Glacier Bay as their spiritual homeland?

The Huna Tlingit regard Glacier Bay as their spiritual homeland; their clans lived in villages inside the bay before resettling across Icy Strait at Hoonah.

The Huna Tribal House, Xunaa Shuká Hít, was dedicated at Bartlett Cove on August 25 of which year?

Xunaa Shuká Hít was dedicated on 25 August 2016, the National Park Service's centennial day, the first permanent clan house in the bay in more than 250 years.

The Glacier Bay Lodge, the park's only in-park accommodation, was built in which year?

Glacier Bay Lodge went up at Bartlett Cove in 1966, one of the last projects of the Park Service's Mission 66 building programme.

Glacier Bay shares a transborder UNESCO site with Wrangell-St. Elias, Tatshenshini-Alsek and which Canadian park?

Kluane National Park and Reserve, across the border in Canada, anchors the site, inscribed in 1979 for its icefields and its grizzly, caribou and Dall sheep habitat.

What may visitors do in Glacier Bay National Preserve that is banned inside the national park?

Sport hunting is legal in the preserve, the Dry Bay area at the Alsek River mouth, but banned in the national park; sport fishing is allowed in both.

Boats in Glacier Bay, kayaks included, must stay at least how far from any humpback whale?

Park rules keep all vessels, kayaks included, at least a quarter nautical mile from humpback whales, stricter than Alaska's general 100-yard rule; humpbacks feed mostly in the lower bay.

Which Minnesota ecologist began studying plant succession at Glacier Bay in 1916 and campaigned to protect it?

William S. Cooper of the University of Minnesota set out nine permanent plots in 1916 to track plant succession and got the Ecological Society of America to lobby for the monument.

Which federal agency opposed the 1925 monument, arguing the area had potential for mineral extraction?

A land-office agent sent to survey the site recommended a boundary that took in the glaciers and little else, until a letter campaign forced the president to add mature forest.

Whose 1939 expansion made Glacier Bay the largest unit in the national park system at the time?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1939 proclamation enlarged the monument to about 2.3 million acres, partly as a brown bear sanctuary, making it the largest unit in the park system.

Which photographer joined the railroad magnate's 1899 scientific expedition that studied Glacier Bay?

Edward S. Curtis, later famous for his portraits of Native Americans, was the official photographer of the 1899 voyage, which also carried John Muir and George Bird Grinnell.

Which glacier's collapse in the September 1899 earthquakes ended its run as the bay's top attraction?

Muir Glacier, whose face stood nearly 300 feet high, shattered in the September 1899 earthquakes and choked its inlet with ice; steamship tours shifted to Taku Glacier near Juneau.

From 1894, up to 200 men mined placer gold near Lituya Bay from what kind of deposit?

Miners worked the gold-bearing beach sands along the Lituya Bay shore from 1894, with production mostly over by 1917; lode mining came later at Reid Inlet's LeRoy Mine.

In 1958 survey crews found a rich copper and nickel deposit beneath which icefield in the park?

The Brady Glacier deposit, found beneath the Brady Icefield in 1958, led Newmont to propose a tunnel mine; the fight spurred the 1976 Mining in the Parks Act and nothing was mined.

At which bay in the park did a salmon cannery operate from 1900 to 1931?

A salmon cannery ran at Dundas Bay, on the park's southern edge west of Bartlett Cove, from 1900 to 1931, one of several early fish plants on Icy Strait.

The ice visible at the face of the park's glaciers is estimated to be roughly how old?

Glacier Bay's glaciers move about 3 to 6 feet a day, so snow that fell in the Fairweather Range takes roughly 200 years to reach the calving face.

Private boaters need a permit to enter Glacier Bay during which months?

Permits can be reserved 60 days ahead and last up to seven days, and a boater may hold only one at a time in the peak season.

Glaciers cover roughly what share of the park's total area?

Ice covers about 27% of the park, roughly 1,375 square miles, flowing from peaks of 8,000 to more than 15,000 feet.

Dalton Post, where rafters put in on the Tatshenshini River, lies in which part of Canada?

Dalton Post sits on the Tatshenshini in southwest Yukon, off the Haines Highway; six-day trips run through two Canadian parks to the take-out at Dry Bay ranger station.

Which two bear species live in Glacier Bay National Park?

Black bears keep to the forested lower bay while brown bears roam the recently deglaciated north; both forage in the intertidal zone, scraping barnacles off rocks.

Glacier Bay was inscribed as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in which year?

UNESCO designated the Glacier Bay-Admiralty Island Biosphere Reserve in 1986, pairing the park with Admiralty Island National Monument, home to one of the densest brown bear populations anywhere.

How many recreational visitors did Glacier Bay average per year between 2012 and 2021?

Glacier Bay averaged about 444,000 recreational visits a year from 2012 to 2021, a span that included the near-empty pandemic year of 2020 and only 89,768 visits in 2021.

In which year did cruise ships begin visiting Glacier Bay regularly?

Regular cruise-ship visits began in 1969, three years after Glacier Bay Lodge opened; worries about their effect on humpback whales later brought daily limits on ships entering the bay.

How much of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is designated wilderness?

About 2.77 million acres of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, the great majority of its 3.3 million acres, is designated wilderness.

Which railroad executive organised the 1899 expedition that spent five days studying Glacier Bay?

Edward H. Harriman, the Union Pacific magnate, chartered the steamer George W. Elder for the 1899 expedition and took some two dozen scientists and artists to Glacier Bay.