Permanent Exhibits

Native Cultures

As far as we know, the area around Valdez was never permanently inhabited before the founding of the town by white settlers, although Natives did use the land for hunting and fishing. However, the area of Valdez’s broader “neighborhood” — Prince William Sound and the Copper River Basin — has been occupied by several different…

Exploration

In the 18th century, Alaska became an arena for competing naval powers to expand their interests. The Russians began the race to fill in the missing corners of the global map by expanding westward, establishing a foothold in Prince William Sound in 1785 by constructing a trading post on Hinchinbrook Island near the Alutiiq village…

Gold Rush

To an America still reeling from an economic depression and unemployment, the lure of gold was irresistible.  Citizens from all walks of life quit their jobs, with 1,500 people departing for the gold fields in the first 10 days of the Klondike Gold Rush in the summer of 1897. The banks of the Yukon Territory’s…

Glacier Journey

In the year 1898 more than 4,000 prospectors crossed the Valdez Glacier at the head of Port Valdez. Their destinations varied from the Klondike gold fields in the Yukon Territory to rumored mineral deposits in the Copper River area of Alaska. They came via Valdez to utilize the “All-American Route” to the gold fields. Much…

Mining

While the Gold Rush brought in thousands of prospectors to the Valdez region, very few made their fortunes. By the 1910s, the era of the lone prospector panning for gold along the river beds was nearing a close, becoming eclipsed by larger scale hard-rock mining operations run by corporations. Off of the glacier moraine of…