Dalton Highway Corridor

Travel across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean along the 414-mile Dalton Highway. There are no restaurants, no gift shops, no service stations—just forest, tundra, and mountains, crossed by a double ribbon of road and pipe.

Tips for Visitors

• Stop off at the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center in Coldfoot to plan your trip.

• Study the Dalton Highway Visitor Guide so you know what to expect.

• Drive the 414-mile gravel road and experience wild Alaska.

• Hike in the Brooks Range, where you are free to forge your own trail.

• Paddle one of the many exciting rivers that weave through the corridor.

Natural Highlights

• The low angle of the sun here means less heat, so the ground stays permanently frozen year-round. Ice in this permafrost creates strange and beautiful features—pingos, palsas, polygons—some of which you can see from the highway.

• Keep your eyes peeled for muskoxen, caribou, snowy owls, grizzlies, and birds.

Historical Highlight

Once called the North Slope Haul Road, the Dalton Highway was built in the 1970s as a supply road to support the trans-Alaska pipeline system. It is named for James Dalton, an Alaska-born engineer who served as consultant in early oil exploration in northern Alaska.

Cultural Highlight

The Yukon River winds nearly 2,000 miles from Canada to the Bering Sea and has long been a natural highway for the people of the region: Native Athabascans first traveled in birchbark canoes; gold-seekers ferried supplies in wood-fired sternwheelers; while today’s residents ply the waters in motorboats in summer and snowmachines in winter.

For more information visit Explore Alaska! or www.blm.gov/ak/st/en/prog/recreation/dalton_hwy.html

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