Valdez Museum & Historical Archive, Alaska, United States

5Rhys J 5:00 PM Jan 20, 2017

Fascinating museum - well worth a visit!
My wife and I enjoyed our morning visit to the museum during our two night stay at the Mountain Sky Hotel, Valdez as part of our escorted ‘Natural Wonders of Alaska’ tour with Titan Travel. This museum and archive occupies two sites in Valdez - the Valdez Museum on Egan and the Valdez Museum on Hazelet. We only had time to visit the Valdez Museum on Egan and what a find! It's unassuming building contains a museum as well as a well stocked book and gift shop with some unique items on sale. The museum has a wealth of historical collections tracing the community’s history from its founding to modern times. The well laid out exhibits contain a variety of artifacts (including a wonderful fire engine), textiles, photographs, documents and audio visual materials, all contributing to tell the story of Valdez. I noticed that a number of items were on loan from private collections, indicating that it's rich and diverse collections belongs to the whole community and that they are proud of their history and heritage. The collections are also important to Alaska as they are a record of life in a small frontier town and provide an insight into some key national events in it's history. I learnt so much about the Gold Rush, the 1964 Earthquake, construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. This museum evolved from the first museum established in Valdez in 1901 by prospector, Joseph Bourke. He put together a small exhibit of “curiosities” that were displayed in various buildings around Valdez. All that changed in 1964, the year of the Alaska Earthquake, which struck Valdez and the town buildings including those housing the exhibits. The buildings were condemned following the earthquake and the community was relocated to the present town site and the home of this fascinating museum. This well run and maintained museum by welcoming, friendly and knowledgeable staff is well worth a visit.

5Jennie O 5:00 PM Jun 10, 2012

2 for the price of one
You get admission to the Old Valdez museum down the street. This is a really nice museum, recreations of miners cabins, old saloon, history of the area including the oil spill. If you're here and need a place to spend a rainy afternoon, this is a great place.