Lake Clark National Park United States

Legendary

This remote park is only accessible by boat or seaplane.

Photo by Lake Clark National Park & Preserve

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In 1968, a man named Dick Proenneke flew into this wilderness with hand tools and built himself a log cabin. He made the door hinges out of wood, carved his own spoons, and filmed everything.

He stayed for roughly 30 years. His cabin still stands at Twin Lakes, and rangers give tours of it in summer.

The park covers about four million acres in southwest Alaska, larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. It has no roads at all, and fewer than 20,000 people visit in a typical year.

Two active volcanoes rise inside it. Mount Redoubt stands 10,197 feet tall and last erupted in 2009, sending up an ash cloud visible from 100 miles away.

Its neighbor, Mount Iliamna, is nearly as tall. Both still vent steam and gas.

Below the volcanoes sits Lake Clark itself, a turquoise lake about 50 miles long, fed by melting glaciers. Its water eventually flows into Bristol Bay.

That connection matters enormously. Sockeye salmon swim up from the ocean to spawn in these lakes and rivers, supporting the largest wild sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

The salmon bring the bears. Brown bears gather at places like Silver Salmon Creek and the Kijik River to fish, and bear watching is the park's most popular activity.

The Dena'ina Athabascan people have lived here for generations. This is their ancestral homeland, and they still fish, hunt, and gather across the region.

A village called Kijik sat on the shore of Lake Clark and was a major Dena'ina center for centuries. It's now protected as a National Historic Landmark.

Fly in by floatplane from Anchorage, since there's no other way to reach the park. Take a guided bear-viewing trip along the coast, which doesn't require any wilderness experience. Visit Proenneke's cabin at Twin Lakes and look at the hand-carved wooden hinges up close.