National Park of Kobuk Valley

Location: Alaska
Established: December 2, 1980
Size: 1,750,000 acres (708,200 hectares)

"Now we were alone between fringes of spruce by a clear stream where tundra went up the sides of mountains," wrote John McPhee in Coming into the Country. The Kobuk Valley, said McPhee, "was, in all likelihood, the most isolated wilderness I would ever see." Located entirely above the Arctic Circle, Kobuk Valley has fewer tourist visits than any other national park. Float a river here in late August and the only other humans you're likely to encounter are Inupiat hunting the caribou that migrate through each year.

Thirteen thousand years ago, when continental glaciers covered much of North America and a land bridge connected Alaska and Asia, Kobuk Valley was an ice-free refuge with grassy tundra similar to that found in Siberia today. Bison, mastodons, and mammoths roamed the valley, along with the humans who hunted them. Since then, the climate has shifted, and sea level has risen to flood the land bridge; many of the early mammals have disappeared. But today's shrubby flora harbors relicts of the preglacial steppe, and in the cold, hard ground lie the legacies of ancient animals and peoples.

Here the Kobuk Valley, cordoned off by the Baird and Waring Mountains, protects the midsection of the Kobuk River, the drainage of the Wild and Scenic Salmon River, and an array of wildlife. This is where the boreal forest reaches its northern limit, and the North American and Asiatic flyways cross. Pockets of tundra blend into birch and spruce, dwarfed by blasts of freezing air. And along the Kobuk River stretch 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of active sand dunes, where summer temperatures can climb to 100°F (38°C).

Kobuk Valley National Park's management plan encourages traditional native subsistence practices over tourism, so no facilities or trails lie within the park.