Outdoors/Adventure

Alaska's Gates of the Arctic ranked second-worst national park

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the second-largest after Wrangell-St. Elias, is also the second-worst national park in the nation, according to a Fox News' list of "America's Worst National Parks," coming in right behind South Carolina's Congaree National Park.

Among the criticisms raised:

• No "real gates.'' The only gates are natural. The area the park covers was named by legendary conservationist Robert Marshall in the 1930s. He thought the Brooks Range mountains near the head of the North Fork Koyukuk River formed a natural gateway to the Arctic plains to north.

• "No roads." Guilty. That's what makes it one of America's true wilderness parks.

• "No trails." Actually, no human trails. The park is littered with caribou trails and in the mountains, with Dall sheep trails.

• "Plenty of man-eating mammals." The only man-eating mammals are grizzly bears, and there aren't all that many. Bear densities in the park are a fourth to a fifth of those in Yellowstone National Park due to the low productivity of Arctic ecosystems.

• "Clouds of biting bugs." At least in the summer, which really only lasts about three months.

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• "Life-sucking swamplands." There are wetlands throughout the park, but no swamps known to kill people.

The story illustrates its section on Gates of the Arctic with a photo of a what appears to be a tidewater glacier. There are no tidewater glaciers in the park. Or tidewater. It is an inland park.

No other Alaska parks made the list, but Badlands National Park was number three, and Death Valley National Park number five.

With names like those, how could they miss?

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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