Photo Credit: Kathleen Barth

The Best Moose Viewing Spots in Anchorage

More than 1,000 moose live year around inside greenbelts and neighborhoods throughout the Anchorage Bowl. It’s not unusual for cow moose to bed down twin calves in suburban backyards, or for a bull moose with a full rack of antlers to amble straight across busy a boulevard, halting traffic as it passes.

But catching a glimpse of the largest member of the deer family on purpose during your personal sight-seeing schedule can be challenging. One trick is to visit the city’s undeveloped areas with long, unobstructed views of moose habitat.

Kincaid Park at the west end of Raspberry Road contains hundreds of acres of moose browse and calving areas, and the animals often walk right along the access road or down the middle of the park’s wide trails.

With its large wetland and mile-long vistas, Potter Marsh offers a particularly easy place to spy moose from a distance. The animals often feed along the edge of the woods at the base of the mountains and can be seen from the boardwalk or pullouts along the road.

For the most intimate, up-close (and reliable) moose viewing, you can’t beat the Alaska Zoo in South Anchorage and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center at the head of Turnagain Arm. Both facilities provide natural habitats for captive or orphaned moose surrounded by fencing.

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Moose Viewing Spots

Here you’ll find one of the most acces­si­ble wildlife view­ing areas in Alas­ka. The marsh is a rest area for migra­to­ry birds includ­ing trum­peter swans, red­necked grebes, gold­en eyes, and pin­tails. Also watch for beavers, moose and bald eagles. You may even spot salmon spawn­ing in the deep­er water.

This 134-acre park is set in the woods where, in 1964, an entire neigh­bor­hood slid into the ocean dur­ing last cen­tu­ry’s most pow­er­ful earth­quake. The earth­quake was mea­sured at a 9.2 on the Richter scale and last­ed 4 min­utes. Today, this trag­ic event is com­mem­o­rat­ed in Anchorage’s Earth­quake Park, where you’ll find signs explain­ing the cir­cum­stances of the quake and its effect on the area.

Season: Year Round $25

At the 200-acre Alas­ka Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter, see Alaskan wildlife up close. The center’s mis­sion is to pro­vide refuge for orphaned, injured, and ill ani­mals — those that can’t sur­vive in the wild. The cen­ter, which opened to the pub­lic in 1993, edu­cates vis­i­tors about Alaska’s wildlife. Coy­otes peer out from behind the brush while a bald eagle swoops in on the salmon remains left by a griz­zly bear. Wood Bison plod through 65 acres of tidal  ...more

Difficulty: Moderate

Kin­caid Park offers the eas­i­est way to get deep in the woods right in town. It’s a mec­ca for out­door sports of all kinds in a wilder­ness-like set­ting on the site of a for­mer Cold War mis­sile base. This 1,500-acre park sprawls over an ancient and rugged moraine at the south­west tip of the Anchor­age Bowl at the west end of Rasp­ber­ry Road. From its panoram­ic views of Denali and the vast Cook Inlet to its inti­mate deep woods enclaves, the park is  ...more

Season: Year Round $17 1.5 - 2 hrs

The Alas­ka Zoo start­ed in 1966 with one baby ele­phant named Annabelle that was won in a con­test. Since then, it has expand­ed to include over 77 ani­mals across 25 acres of the Anchor­age hillside.

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