Glacier Bay is a bay in south-eastern part of Alaska. It runs north northwest to south south-east for about 65 miles between two pinchets of Alaska. It ranges from 3-20 miles wide. The area around Glacier Bay was first pro claimed a U.S. National Monument on February 25, 1925. It was changed to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve on Dec. 2, 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is a United States National Park in the southern part of Alaska west of Juneau. The area is a popular cruise ship destination.
Wildlife in the area includes bears, deer, mountain goats, whales, and waterfowl.
About 200 years ago, Glacier Bay did not exist. A single, gigantic ice mass extended into Icy Strait and completely filled the Bay. The explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait, at the south end of Glacier Bay, choked with ice in 1794. Glacier Bay itself was almost entirely iced over. In 1879 naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated almost all the way up the bay. By 1916 Grand Pacific Glacier was at the head of Tarr Inlet, about 65 miles from Glacier Bay's mouth. This is the fastest documented glacier retreat ever. Scientists are hoping to learn how glacial activity relates to climate changes from the retreat.
Glacier Bay contains 16 glaciers, twelve of which are active and are calving, tidewater glaciers within its 65-mile length . Fjords of Glacier Bay that have actively calving, tidewater glaciers are Johns Hopkins, Tarr, Reid, and Muir inlets. Muir, Rendu, Queen, Adams, Hugh Miller, Wachusett, and Geikie Inlets all had tidewater glaciers during the twentieth century that have retreated onto land.
Glacier Bay National Park was established in 1980.
We arrived near the Ranger Station at the beginning of the Bay about 6:00am. Our end point, while Cruising the Bay, is the Margerie Glacier, shown in the the banner above. Margerie is a 21 mile-long glacier. It begins on the south slope of Mount Root, at the Alaska-Canada border, and flows southeast and northeast to Tarr Inlet, one mile north of the terminus of Grand Pacific Glacier. It was named for famed French geographer and geologist Emmanuel de Margerie (1867-1953), who visited Glacier Bay in 1913.
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