4 Best Sights in Anchorage, Alaska

On a 26-acre site facing the Chugach Mountains, this facility provides an introduction to Alaska Native peoples. The spacious Gathering Place has interpretive displays, artifacts, photographs, demonstrations, Alaska Native dances, storytelling, and films, along with a gift shop selling crafts and artwork. Step outside for a stroll around the adjacent lake, where seven village exhibits represent 11 cultural groups through traditional structures and exhibitions. As you enter the homes in these villages, you can visit with the hosts, hear their stories, and try some of the tools, games, and utensils used in the past.

The garden showcases perennials hardy enough to make it in Southcentral Alaska in several large display gardens, a pergola-enclosed herb garden, and a rock garden amid 110 acres of mixed boreal forest. There's a 1-mile nature trail loop to Campbell Creek, with views of the Chugach Range and a wildflower trail between the display gardens. Interpretive signs guide visitors and identify plants along the trail. Docent tours are available upon request, and events occur throughout the year.

Roam the trails and visit with the polar bears, caribou, brown and black bears, seals, tigers, snow leopards, moose, wolves, lynx, and a large array of birds that call the Alaska Zoo home. The zoo provides a wide array of programs included with admission, such as zookeeper talks and toddler story times, that concentrate on promoting the conservation of arctic and subarctic animal species. Throughout the summer for an additional fee you can join daily two-hour tours that include behind-the-scenes stops. The zoo is located in the foothills on the edge of town, but a summer-only shuttle leaves from the Downtown Visitor Center at 4th Avenue and E Street every hour. 

Sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, and other migratory birds, as well as the occasional moose or beaver, frequent this marsh about 10 miles south of Downtown on the Seward Highway. An elevated boardwalk makes viewing easy, and in summer there are salmon runs in the creek beneath the bridge. An old railroad service building just south of the marsh operates as a state park office.