It was a cool July morning – 54 degrees – when the Viking Orion docked at Port Valdez, Alaska. Scattered showers were predicted but never really materialized. Low lying clouds prevented one of the excursions but not the walking tour and shopping.

Valdez was founded prior to the turn of the century during the gold rush and incorporated in 1901. It is located on a mile-long strip of land on the Prince William Sound at the base of the Chugach Mountains. Valdez is also the southern most end of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline and victim of the second largest oil spill in U.S. history when in March 1989, a tanker spilled approximately 500,000 barrels of crude oil into the Sound.

Another catastrophic event for Valdez was the Good Friday Earthquake on March 27, 1964. Land was destroyed, thirty-two lives lost. Because the terrain was considered unsafe, the town moved four miles away and with the assistance of the Army Corps of Engineers, moved buildings and artifacts to the new location. I hope to do another blog about the earthquake.

There is no glamor or glitz to the town. Rather, it is a rectangular strip of land with two main streets and many side streets, non-descript wood buildings and homes offering five motels and an RV park with two local breweries and three museums for entertainment. Unlike many of the towns in Alaska, Valdez is self-sufficient with a small hospital and clinic, high school, middle school, community college, post office, public library, grocery store and pharmacy.

We have a cottage in Deltaville, Virginia that boasts there are more boats than humans in the town and I was impressed with the large marina that took up half of the main street. Come to find out, Valdez hosts the oldest fishing derbies in Alaska offering thousands of dollars in prize money.

Brown Bears and black bears are very prominent April through September. One of the local gift shop owners shared how she sprayed a can of bear spray at a young bear that ambled by her shop the week before. Later that evening, he visited, and cleared, the RV park behind her shop when some of the campers were enjoying dinner. The day before we arrived, he had spent the afternoon at the children’s play area in the small park. She went on to say they planned to trap the bear soon and relocate him.

We visited the Valdez Museum which highlighted much of the history of the town from its Native Alaskan settlers, the Gold Rush, Richardson Highway – first major road in Alaska that connects Valdez to Fairbanks – railroads, history of the Pipeline and Oil spill and bush pilots. It also hosts the original town’s Pinzon Bar – a forty-foot bar, longest in Alaska – which was the center for socializing and political activity. It was owned by Clinton J. Egan, brother to William J. Egan, Alaska’s first elected governor.

As I noted earlier, the clouds were very low, and it so impressed me to look toward the end of the street and see the mountains peeking through the clouds.