Glacier Bay Basin

Glacier Bay Basin in southeastern Alaska is the core of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, a vast protected marine and glacial landscape of fjords, islands, mountains, and tidewater glaciers. Once buried beneath a single enormous ice mass, the basin has changed rapidly over the last two centuries as the ice retreated, exposing long reaches of ocean and leaving more than 50 named glaciers. The homeland of the Huna Tlingit, it later drew explorers, naturalists, and tourists as its dramatic glacial change became widely known. Today it is valued for conservation, scientific research, wilderness, and tightly managed visitation, and it is recognized through UNESCO biosphere and World Heritage designations.