Glaciers Bay National Park Essay

Research Paper Rough Draft If you’ve ever been to a national park, you will probably remember the experience for the rest of your life. But what is it that makes you remember that experience? Is it the sights, or the landmarks, or the history behind the park? Well I believe that Glacier Bay national park in Alaska is the most beautiful because of all of these reasons. The sights are breath taking; the tidewater glaciers are spectacular; and the history behind the park is intriguing. The Grand Canyon is beautiful, but are their kayaking trips or whales in it? Does Yellowstone have a history dating back to the Ice Age? About fifty miles long, along the coast of southern Alaska lay a scenic destination. A bay filled with glaciers that tell

Scientists believe that the ice in Glacier bay during the first ice age could have been nearly 1000 feet thick! And as the original glacier has diminished in size from that time, it has left 20 separate glaciers, of which two are tidewater glaciers that calve into the bay. And as recently as 200 years ago, in almost all of Glacier Bay, a fjord was covered by the Grand Pacific Glacier; since then the ice has been retreating and Glacier Bay, now 65 miles long, has taken it’s present form. When Captain Lester A. Berdslee of the U.S. Navy was in it in 1980, its beauty took him away. He gave it the name “Glacier Bay” because of it’s striking locality. This was also the same year when it was declared an national park and preserve. Though years earlier it was proclaimed a national monument in 1925. And then in 1992 it was designed a UNESCO World Heritage site. Today, the park’s headquarters are at Gustavuas, near the mouth of the bay. The bay, which is studded with many largely treeless islands that are used a rookeries by thousands of seabirds, has fjord like inlets that terminate at ice cliffs or sheer faces of the glaciers. It contains at 16 active glaciers that descend from the St. Elias Mountains to the east and Fair-weather Rage to the west. The park and reserve cover an area of 5,129 square miles and includes Glacier Bay itself, the northern, southern, and western slopes of Mount Fairweather, and the U.S. portion of the Alsek