Seward

About Seward

Seward is the alternative Gulf of Alaska turnaround port — smaller than Whittier but more tourist-oriented, sitting at the head of Resurrection Bay with a walkable downtown of galleries, seafood restaurants, and a small-boat harbor. The Alaska SeaLife Center, on the waterfront a short walk from the cruise pier, is both a public aquarium and a marine-mammal rehabilitation facility that cares for orphaned Steller sea lions and harbor seals. The most popular shore excursion is a full-day wildlife cruise into Kenai Fjords National Park to see tidewater glaciers, orcas, puffins, and sea otters. Like Whittier, most turnaround passengers transfer onward by motorcoach or on the Alaska Railroad's Coastal Classic to Anchorage.

• Seward sits on Resurrection Bay, a glacially carved fjord of the Gulf of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula, roughly 120 miles south of Anchorage.
• The city is named for Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 — a deal initially mocked as 'Seward's Folly'.
• Seward is Mile 0 of the historic Iditarod Trail, the original overland route to Interior Alaska, with a marker on the shoreline at the south end of town.
• It is the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad, making it a key freight and passenger gateway to the interior of the state.
• In 2015, President Barack Obama visited Exit Glacier near Seward to highlight the visible impacts of climate change, describing the receding glacier as 'as good a signpost of what we're dealing with as just about anything.'