Guide to the Copper River Watershed

Stop here for a bathroom break and stretch your legs by the creek.  Little creeks drain into bigger creeks and create bigger rivers.  Learn how the waters in this small creek make their way to the Gulf of Alaska.

Campground with 80 RV sites, 20 Tent Sites. Access to Tolsona Mud Volcanoes Trail. 

This is a privately maintained trail.  It is located 14 miles west of Glennallen at the Tolsona Wilderness Campground, at mile 173 on the Glenn Highway.  Hikers who are not registered campers are asked to pay a fee of $5 per vehicle. 

The town of Glenallen is named after two early explorers. Henry Allen was a lieutenant who travelled through this area in 1885 on his way to the Yukon River, and Capt. Edwin Glenn was part of the U.S. Government survey crew for the Richardson Highway that came through in 1898-99. Glennallen is also a part of the Copper River Watershed. Find the interpretive sign at the visitor's center and orient yourself in the watershed with a map of Ahtna native placenames.

This is a privately maintained trail, located at Mile 187 on the Glenn Highway.  In Glennallen, turn north on Co-op Drive, trailhead and parking area are marked with a sign that says “Aspen Interpretive Trail.” Trail is rated “easy,” allow about 1 hour for 1 mile round-trip. The beginning of this trail has been re-routed. At the trailhead, look for signs to the right, indicating the new route.  The trail passes through three distinct ecosystems within the boreal forest. It continues along a well marked dirt and gravel path and loops back to the trailhead. 

Take in the sweep of the Copper River as it unfolds through the valley bottom, and imagine its changes throughout the seasons from high summer flows to freeze up in the fall.  Over winter it is an iced-over travel route for winter mushers and wildlife, and during spring break up the ice pans rumble their way down stream as the sun returns to the Copper Basin.

For thousands of years, under a winter moon, the Ahtna, Copper River’s first people, have begun their story telling season.  Trained storytellers share the Sacred Stories, their Stories of Creation. Younger generations listen. Embedded in memory, traditions are restitched and sacred covenants made clear. Teaching stories follow throughout the year, passed on by respected elders: aunts, uncles, and grandparents. These ways of living in the land and with each other continue an ancient weaving of story, family, wisdom and place.  

When the last federal homestead land went public in 1983,  radio host Paul Harvey broadcast, “free land in the Last Frontier.” From across America, hundreds hurried to Slana with big dreams and little preparation.  Pioneer romance crashed head on into harsh weather, no jobs, nearly impossible regulations, claim jumpers and chaos.  Decades later, like husks  More...

If you see a salmon here in the river, it swam nearly 300 miles to lay its eggs in a headwaters, freshwater tributary of the Copper River. Alaska’s greatest renewable resource needs respect and care for its spawning streams to continue reproducing and providing high quality food for subsistence, personal use, and commercial harvesters.

Campground with 35 sites, picnic table, shelter, toilets, and 2.5 mile hiking trail overlooking the Tok River Valley.

Traveling the Richardson Highway south of Glennallen, you will pass Willow Lake with spectacular views of the lake and the Wrangell Mountain volcanoes in the distance.  Read about how ancient Lake Atna once filled the area you’re driving through and shaped the Copper River valley.

Historic Copper Center is one of the oldest non-native communities in Alaska's Interior. Founded as a government agricultural experimental station, it later served as a transportation center for gold rush prospectors. Also find the interpretive sign where you'll learn about the local fish species that make their home in different habitat niches of Copper River watershed creeks and rivers.

Housed in rustic log cabins, the museum offers the visitor a unique look at the varied past of the Copper River Valley area. Exhibits include early mining of gold and copper, and Russian artifacts.

Kenny Lake (pop.500) Kenny lake was established in 1910 as an Alaska Road Commission Roadhouse for the Valdez-Fairbanks-Chitina Military Road. Today it is a small farming community where residents lead a self-sufficient lifestyle harvesting fish, game, berries and organic produce.

You're now looking at the Chitina River just before it merges with the Copper River and disappears out of view. The braided Chitina below actually carries more water than the Copper River, despite losing the name battle. (It's actually more of a name tie, though, as Chitina is the native word for copper.) Heavy rains, floods, and outbursts from glacially-dammed lakes can fill  More...