History

Captain James Cook sailed into and named Prince William Sound [1] in 1778; Spanish explorer Don Salvador Fidalgo entered “Puerto de Valdez” in 1790, naming it after Spain’s Marine Minister. In 1898, Valdez [2] was a tent city of stampeders similar to Skagway [3], except for one critical detail: There was no trail to the Interior [4]. Still, 4,000–6,000 death-defying cheechakos crossed the Valdez Glacier that year.

Army Captain William Abercrombie described the foolhardy newcomers as “terrifyingly incompetent…wholly unprepared physically and morally for what they would face.” They barely knew how to strap packs on their backs, and few thought to carry the two basic necessities: water and wood. Many were blinded by the sun’s reflection off the ice. Many got lost in howling storms, in which it was impossible to see or hear the person ahead.

Of those who managed to reach the summit, many lost their loads and lives on slick downhill slides into oblivion. Those who actually got off the glacier intact had to contend with the fast cold waters of the runoff. Many men with heavy packs lost their footing and drowned in knee-deep water. Some attempted to build boats and float down the Klutina River to Copper Center [5]; few made it. And those stuck between the glacier and the river had nothing.

In the final count, by fall all but 300 (and the countless dead) of those who’d set out from Valdez [2] during the spring and summer of 1898 returned to Valdez the way they came. Abercrombie found them destitute and broken. Many had gone mad, most had scurvy and frostbitten hands, feet, and faces. Facilities were squalid, and there was no food. Abercrombie postponed his orders to blaze a trail into the Interior for six months to feed, clothe, house, and arrange transportation home for the survivors.

Eventually, the army built a road through Keystone Canyon [6]—providing access to the Interior—as well as a military base across the bay from Valdez called Fort Liscum; it lasted until 1923.