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Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
The largest U.S. national park, where four mountain ranges converge
With its adjoining preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias covers about 13.2 million acres (53,300 km²), more than Switzerland and more than the 47 smallest national parks combined. Four mountain ranges meet here, the Wrangell, St. Elias, Chugach and Alaska ranges, and nine of the 16 highest peaks in the United States rise within its boundaries. Mount St. Elias climbs 18,008 feet (5,489 m) from near sea level, second only to Denali in the United States, and Mount Wrangell, a massive shield volcano, still vents steam from its summit.
Ice covers much of the park. The Malaspina Glacier, spreading across the coastal plain at the foot of the St. Elias Mountains, is the largest piedmont glacier in North America. In the interior, the red mill buildings of Kennecott recall a copper boom that ran from 1911 to 1938 and produced some of the richest copper ore ever found, now preserved as a National Historic Landmark district reached by the gravel McCarthy Road.
Ahtna Athabascans along the Copper River and Tlingit people at Yakutat Bay lived here long before the miners, and local residents keep subsistence rights in the park. Proclaimed a national monument in 1978 and made a park in 1980, it joins Glacier Bay and two Canadian parks in a World Heritage Site.