Sights Overview

Founded in 1915 as a railroad camp, Anchorage has grown into Alaska's largest city and main travel hub. It's connected to the state's road network by the Seward and Glenn highways and remains the headquarters for the Alaska Railroad, which runs from Seward to Fairbanks. It's bordered to the east by the Chugach foothills, to the west by Cook Inlet, to the south by Potter Marsh, and to the north by military bases.

Navigating downtown Anchorage's flower-lined streets is simple. The grid plan was laid out by the Army Corps of Engineers, and streets and avenues run exactly east-west and north-south, with numbers in the first direction and letters of the alphabet or Alaska place-names (Barrow, Cordova, Denali, etc.) in the other. The only aberration is the absence of a J Street -- a concession, some say, to the city's early Swedish settlers, who had difficulty pronouncing the letter.

Outside of downtown, Anchorage is composed of widely scattered neighborhoods and large shopping malls clustered along busy thoroughfares. And while there's no shortage of excellent restaurants downtown, many of the town's best places are found in some unlikely locations -- Anchorage must have more good restaurants in cheesy strip malls than any other American city outside of Phoenix. Also, you're never more than a block or two from a good espresso stand or cart, including the ubiquitous Starbucks. The city has a decent local bus system, and in the snow-free months a network of paved trails provides good avenues of in-city travel for bicyclists and walkers.