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Tongass National Forest
The largest U.S. national forest, a temperate rainforest in Southeast Alaska
The Tongass is bigger than West Virginia — about 16.7 million acres (67,600 km²) of islands, fjords, glaciers and old-growth rainforest covering most of Southeast Alaska. It is the largest national forest in the United States and the largest remaining temperate rainforest on Earth. Sitka spruce, western hemlock and cedar shade streams that carry all five species of Pacific salmon, and brown bears and bald eagles gather on them each summer. The forest takes its name from the Tongass clan of the Tlingit, one of three Native nations, with the Haida and Tsimshian, whose homelands it covers.
Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Tongass in 1907 and joined it with the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve in 1908. Thirty-one communities, including Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, sit inside its boundaries, reachable mostly by boat or plane. For decades the Forest Service sold old-growth timber to pulp mills, and clearcuts still scar parts of Prince of Wales Island. Nineteen wilderness areas now protect more than 5.7 million acres (23,000 km²), more than in any other national forest, and commercial fishing and tourism far outweigh logging in the regional economy.
The forest's roadless areas are the focus of a 25-year legal fight. The 2001 Roadless Rule barred most new roads in about 9.3 million acres of the Tongass, an exemption in 2020 removed that protection, and a 2023 rule restored it. On August 20, 2026, the Department of Agriculture formally proposed rescinding the Roadless Rule nationwide, the Tongass included. As of October 2026 the rescission had not been finalized, and the 2023 protections remained in effect.