Denali National Park

Denali National Park and Preserve, established in 1917 in interior Alaska, protects six million acres of subarctic wilderness around Denali, the highest mountain in North America. Larger than the state of New Hampshire, the park is a vast sweep of tundra, taiga forest, braided glacial rivers, and the great peaks of the Alaska Range, home to grizzly bears, wolves, caribou, moose, and Dall sheep roaming a landscape with almost no roads.

A single 92-mile gravel road penetrates the park, most of it open only to buses, so the wilderness stays genuinely wild and the wildlife undisturbed. Denali itself, often hidden in its own weather, reveals its full 20,310-foot bulk only on clear days, towering over everything. Far north and lightly visited compared with the famous parks of the lower 48, Denali offers one of the largest intact ecosystems left in the country.