Chugach National Forest

Chugach National Forest is the northernmost national forest in the country and one of the most ice-covered, a 6.9-million-acre (28,000 km²) sweep of mountains, tidewater glaciers and rainforest wrapped around Prince William Sound. Roughly the size of New Hampshire, it is the second-largest national forest after the Tongass. Its land divides into three parts. Prince William Sound accounts for nearly half, with about 3,500 miles (5,630 km) of shoreline and 22 tidewater glaciers that calve into the sea. The Copper River Delta holds the largest contiguous wetland complex on North America's Pacific coast, and the eastern Kenai Peninsula carries part of the historic Iditarod Trail.

Theodore Roosevelt created the Chugach in 1907, and its name comes from the Chugach Alutiiq people of the sound. The forest has been shaped by catastrophe. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake dropped the coast at Portage and drowned its forests in salt water, and the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill fouled the beaches of Prince William Sound. Today more than half of all Alaskans live within a day's drive, and visitors come to see Portage Glacier, fish the Russian River and ride to Whittier through a shared rail-and-road tunnel.

• Kenai Fjords National Park
  Harding Icefield glaciers spilling into the Gulf of Alaska borders
• Alaska
  The largest U.S. state, a sub-Arctic giant located in
• Anchorage
  Alaska's largest city, between mountains and sea near
• Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
  The largest U.S. national park, where four mountain ranges converge near
• Tongass National Forest
  The largest U.S. national forest, a temperate rainforest in Southeast Alaska related