Goat Trail

During the Gold Rush, the U.S. Army arrived at Valdez to build a trail into the interior but found the Valdez Glacier impassable much of the year, so it cut a narrow trail along the walls of rugged Keystone Canyon. In 1898, seeking a better alternative to the glacier route, a crew led by Corporal Robert Heiden hacked a rough path through dense vegetation, alder tangles, and thorny devil’s club beside a fast, icy river. The next year, after Congress appropriated money for the Trans-Alaska Military Road linking Fort Liscum at Valdez with Fort Egbert at Eagle City on the Yukon River, workers improved Heiden’s four-mile canyon trail in 35 days using only saws, axes, picks, shovels, and sledge hammers. The section along the canyon wall became known as the Goat Trail, a difficult route that was safer in summer than crossing Valdez Glacier, though winter travelers preferred the frozen river through Keystone Canyon or the glacier until the trail was improved to a wagon road. After World War II, the present highway replaced it, and the Goat Trail became a hiking trail.

Valdez, Alaska · United States