Alaska Photos

Katmai National Park and Preserve is home to more than 2,000 brown bears. In July and September they are often seen feasting on the world's largest sockeye salmon run.

Photograph by George F. Mobley

Alaska Range

Photograph by Bill Hatcher

A vast land of overwhelming beauty, abundant resources, and few people, America's Last Frontier stretches across some 660,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) of rugged land. More than a third of mineral-rich Alaska is forested; a quarter is set aside as parks, refuges, and wilderness. The Alaska Range, pictured above, stretches from Canada's Yukon border in the east to the base of the Aleutian Range in the west.

Ugak Bay

Photograph by George F. Mobley

Ugak Bay sleeps beneath a winter sun. Many of these long inlets deeply cleave the coast: No site on land is more than 15 miles [24 kilometers] from the sea.

Grayling Lake Trail

Photograph by Michael Melford

A water lily-carpeted pond edges Grayling Lake Trail, north of Seward, Alaska. One of the lakes along the trail abounds in grayling, surface feeders with long dorsal fins.

Ayakulik River

Photograph by George F. Mobley

Fabulous fishing creates tent towns on the Ayakulik. Six salmon species—chinook, sockeye, pink, coho, steelhead, and chum—spawn in it.

Old Harbor, Kodiak

Photograph by George F. Mobley

Snug outpost, Old Harbor—population 298—nestles beneath sheltering peaks. On Kodiak [Island] nearly everyone fishes, including the island's huge brown bears, which roam a renowned wildlife refuge.