50 States of Wonder
11 Places Where Alaska Bursts Into Color

Totem Bight State Historical Park presents Native Alaskan culture as something to be lived and explored in the three-dimensional here-and-now. Built on an old native fishing ground in Southeast Alaska, just outside Ketchikan, the park recreates a 19th-century Native Alaskan village, whose original totem poles and traditional structures had been abandoned and left to be reclaimed by nature. (Read more.)

Many of the most memorable residents of Oz, from Toto to the Tin Man, can be found on top of a sheet metal business—far from Kansas. All are posed, beautifully handmade from metal, and of course, brightly painted. (Read more.)

While Alaska’s glaciers may have worldwide renown, the Mendenhall Valley contains its own marvel, lovingly crafted by Steve and Cindy Bowhay, the owners of a truly unique botanical garden in Tongass National Forest. Dotted throughout the garden are upside-down trees, known as “Flower Towers,” that have their tops buried in the ground and their roots thrust up in the air, forming a basket that cradles colorful, trailing flowers. (Read more.)

There are scant few places where you can experience every stage of the water cycle at once. But there’s magic in the Mendenhall Ice Caves, where water runs over rocks and under frozen, bright-blue ceilings inside a partially hollow glacier, only 12 miles from downtown Juneau. (Read more.)

The discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 set off the Klondike Gold Rush, which saw roughly 100,000 prospectors flood the territory. Much of this traffic flowed through Skagway, and in particular the historic Golden North Hotel, which provides both a history of the period and a legacy of the supernatural. (Read more.)

The tiny town of Klukwan is struggling to keep its millennia-old traditions alive. With a dwindling population—fewer than 100 people today—the language, land, and history of the local Tlingit tribe are all at risk. The people of of the town constructed the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center as both a visitor attraction and a monument to the Tlingit tribe’s rich history. (Read more.)

A combination of Russian Orthodox tradition and Native American practices, the graveyard outside of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Eklutna is filled with more than 100 colorful burial sites. These fantastic spirit houses, each about the size of a large dollhouse, are considered part of the Eklutna Historical Park. (Read more.)

Mukluk Land is billed as the “Most Alaskan place in Alaska,” a theme park built from scraps and salvage. It features a hodgepodge of busted fire engines and snow machines, a Santa Claus rocket ship on wheels, whack-a-mole, cotton candy, a doll mausoleum, a giant mosquito, a trampoline igloo, mini-golf, gold panning, an outhouse collection, and a Skee-Ball alley—as well as the world’s largest mukluk. (Read more.)

Located at the Chena Hot Springs Resort, the Aurora Ice Museum is the world’s largest year-round ice environment. That means jousting knights, polar bear bedrooms, a two-story snowball fight structure, perfectly chilled cocktails in icy martini glasses, and colorful lights that make it all twinkle. (Read more.)

During the Alaskan Gold Rush, eager miners used high-pressure water guns to sweep away frozen silt, the possibility of gold right underneath it in the gravel. They often came across the mummified carcasses of large animals, and in July 1979, a busy miner uncovered a pair of bison feet poking awkwardly out of the mud. At 36,000 years old and remarkably preserved, Blue Babe—named for the metallic sheen of the mummified hide—has provided astounding scientific information. (Read more.)

Smack in the middle of Alaska is a research facility that studies a wonderful mix of rockets and auroras. The Poker Flat Research Range is comprised of over 5,000 acres of science-y goodness, using rocketry to take a closer look at the aurora borealis, the magnetic field, and the ozone. (Read more.)