Port Valdez—or the Puerto de Valdés, as it was named by Vancouver after Whidbey's exploration—is a fiord twelve miles long and of a beauty that is simply enchanting.
On a clear day it winds like a pale blue ribbon between colossal mountains of snow, with glaciers streaming down to the water at every turn. The peaks rise, one after another, sheer from the water, pearl-white from summit to base.
It has been my happiness and my good fortune always to sail this fiord on a clear day. The water has been as smooth as satin, with a faint silvery tinge, as of frost, shimmering over its blue.
At the end, Port Valdez widens into a bay, and upon the bay, in the shadow of her mountains, and shaded by her trees, is Valdez.
Valdez! The mere mention of the name is sufficient to send visions of loveliness glimmering through the memory. Through a soft blur of rose-lavender mist shine houses, glacier, log-cabins, and the tossing green of trees; the wild, white glacial torrents pouring down around the town; and the pearly peaks linked upon the sky.
Valdez was founded in 1898. During the early rush to the Klondike, one of the routes taken was directly over the glacier. In 1898 about three thousand people landed at the upper end of Port Valdez, followed the glacier, crossed over the summit of the Chugach Mountains, and thence down a fork of the Copper River. The route was dangerous, and attended by many hardships and real suffering.
At first hundreds of tents whitened the level plain at the foot of the glacier; then, one by one, cabins were built, stocks were brought in for trading purposes, saloons and dance halls sprang up in a night,—and Valdez was.
In this year Captain Abercrombie, of the United States Army, crossed the glacier with his entire party of men and horses and reached the Tanana. In the following year, surveys were made under his direction for a military wagon trail over the Chugach Mountains from Valdez to the Tanana, and during the following three years this trail was constructed.
It has proved to be of the greatest possible benefit, not only to the vast country tributary to Valdez, but to the various Yukon districts, and to Nome. After many experiments, it has been chosen by the government as the winter route for the distribution of mail to the interior of Alaska and to Nome. Steamers make connection with a regular line of stages and sleighs. There are frequent and comfortable road houses, and the danger of accident is not nearly so great as it is in travelling by railway in the eastern states.
The Valdez military trail follows Lowe River and Keystone Canyon. Through the canyon the trail is only wide enough for pack trains, and travel is by the frozen river.