OUR NATIONAL PARKS CENTENNIAL: Denali Park, Alaska

---

Less than a year after the National Park Service Centenial, Denali celebrates it's one hundredth birthday on February 26, 2017! My first visit to Denali was July 1969 and I got in caught in blizzard-like conditions while taking the Tundra Wilderness tour in the park. Since then I have been back in June 2001 and 2006. On our first visit together in 2001 Pat took the Husky Homestead Tour while I experienced a thrilling raft ride down the Nenana River. The Husky Homestead Tour included a sled dog demonstration and a visit with adorable puppies. The day before we both participated on the 8-hour Tundra Wilderness Tour which took us out the Denali Park Road to mile 53, the Toklat River Rest Stop using busses similar to school busses. You can take a longer 11 to 12 hour trip out to the old gold town of Kantishna, located at mile 89 or the shorter Natural History Tour lasting up to 5 hours traveling as far as Primrose Ridge, mile 17.

Inspired by the beauty of the Toklat River area, naturalist Charles Sheldon spent nine years lobbying congress to create the park, the first national park in Alaska. Established in 1917 with the name Mount McKinley, It was renamed Denali or "the High One," the native Athabaskan name for the majestic peak 63 years later. That same year, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act enlarged the boundaries by four million acres to 6,075,029 acres, regrouping the land into Denali National Park and Preserve.

---

Photos

Denali National Park
photo by © Can Stock Photo Inc. / kitleong

Mt. Denali taken from Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge
June 17, 2001

Mt. Denali taken from Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge
June 17, 2001

View from The Denali Park Road
June 18, 2001

Rafting on the Nenana River
June 19, 2001

Mt. Denali just peaking through the clouds
was all we saw just before leaving Talkeetna for Denali on June 12, 2006

Murie Science and Learning Center
June 13, 2006

Nenana River
June 14, 2006

Nenana River
June 14, 2006