Valdez is a picturesque community located on Prince William Sound in Southcentral Alaska, well known for its fishing heritage and as being one of the few ice-free ports in Alaska. The surrounding coastal mountains have been compared to those of the Swiss Alps.
The original town of Valdez, founded in 1898, was created via a scam to lure prospectors off the Klondike Gold Rush trail. Steamship companies promoted the Valdez Glacier Trail as a better route than Skagway for miners to reach both the Klondike gold fields and the Copper River fields in interior Alaska. With steep glacier trails, many miners died attempting the crossing and Valdez did not flourish until after the construction of the Richardson Highway in 1899. The highway connected Valdez and Fairbanks and permanently established the town as the first overland supply station in to the interior of Alaska.
Since its gold rush days, Valdez has evolved into an important shipping center because it is the most northerly year-round, ice-free port in the western hemisphere. Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was completed in 1977 and Valdez was chosen as the terminus for the 800 mile pipeline out of Prudhoe Bay. During the construction phase of the pipeline, Valdez’s population surged to 10,000. When it was completed and the oil started flowing, the population settled to its current level of about 4,000 year-round residents.
