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Kobuk Valley National Park
Arctic sand dunes and caribou crossings in northwest Alaska
Some 25 miles (40 km) north of the Arctic Circle, golden sand dunes rise as high as 100 feet (30 m) beside the Kobuk River, an unlikely desert scene in a land of tundra and boreal forest. The Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, along with the Little Kobuk and Hunt River dunes, are remnants of dune fields that once covered about 200,000 acres after Ice Age glaciers ground the surrounding rock to fine sediment. Today about 20,500 acres of active sand remain, the largest active Arctic dune field in North America, where summer surface temperatures can reach 100°F (38°C).
Each spring and fall the Western Arctic caribou herd swims the Kobuk River on its long migration, as it has for millennia. At Onion Portage, a National Historic Landmark, archaeologists have traced human use of this crossing back at least 9,000 years, and Iñupiat families from nearby villages still hunt and fish the valley under subsistence protections. The park has no roads or trails and is reached by air taxi from Kotzebue or Bettles. It became a national monument in 1978 and a national park in 1980, and it is the least visited national park in the country.