Abandoned places in Alaska exist on a scale that the Lower 48 simply can't match. The state covers 663,000 square miles of tundra, glacier-carved coastline, boreal forest, and volcanic island chains, and for over a century humans have tried to scratch a living from every corner of it. Gold rushers poured in during the 1890s and left ghost towns scattered from the Panhandle to the Interior when the color ran out. The U.S. military built massive Cold War installations on remote Aleutian islands, then walked away when the Soviet threat faded. Native villages were emptied by government policy, earthquakes, and economic collapse. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake alone, the most powerful ever recorded in North America, wiped entire communities off the map in a matter of minutes. Today, Alaska holds more than 89 verified abandoned locations on Urbex Maps, each one shaped by the extreme geography and punishing climate that make this state both irresistible and unforgiving. These are not gentle ruins. They are frozen, wind-blasted, and often accessible only by bush plane or boat.
This guide covers 10 of the most iconic abandoned places in Alaska, chosen for their historical significance, physical drama, and the stories behind their emptying. Every entry includes a YouTube walkthrough, satellite imagery, and a free GPS coordinate button that saves the location directly to your Urbex Maps profile. No paywall. Just click, sign in, and the spot is yours.
1. Buckner Building
The Buckner Building in Whittier is one of the largest abandoned structures in the United States and certainly the most imposing ruin in Alaska. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1953, this massive reinforced concrete complex was designed to house an entire military community under one roof. The logic was simple: Whittier sits at the head of Passage Canal on Prince William Sound, surrounded by mountains that dump over 20 feet of snow annually and funnel winds through the fjord at hurricane force. Putting everything, barracks, mess halls, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a movie theater, a jail, and a hospital, inside a single building meant soldiers could survive an entire Alaskan winter without stepping outside.
The building was named after General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., who commanded the Alaska Defense Command during World War II and was killed at Okinawa in 1945. At its peak, the Buckner Building housed around 1,000 military personnel. The complex was connected by tunnel to the nearby Whittier Manor (Begich Towers), where families lived. For a decade, this was one of the most remote and self-contained military communities in the world.
Then the 1964 Good Friday earthquake hit. The 9.2-magnitude quake, centered just 54 miles away, generated tsunamis that devastated Whittier's port facilities and severely damaged the Buckner Building's infrastructure. The military had already been scaling back operations as Cold War priorities shifted, and the earthquake damage gave the Army its reason to leave. By 1966, the military pulled out of Whittier entirely, and the Buckner Building was left to the elements. Sixty years of Alaskan winters have done their work: the roof has partially collapsed, interior walls are crumbling, and ice forms on every surface from October through April. The building remains standing but is officially condemned. It looms over Whittier like a concrete ghost, visible from the one road into town and from the Alaska Railroad platform.
2. Kennecott Mines
Kennecott is the crown jewel of Alaska's ghost towns and one of the most spectacular industrial ruins in North America. The complex sits at the base of the Wrangell Mountains in what is now Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest national park in the United States. In 1900, a pair of prospectors named Jack Smith and Clarence Warner spotted a massive green cliff face on Bonanza Ridge while grazing their horses. That green was copper, and the deposit turned out to be the richest concentration of copper ore ever discovered.
The Kennecott Copper Corporation (the company misspelled the name) built a full-scale mining operation in one of the most inaccessible locations imaginable. Between 1911 and 1938, the company constructed a 14-story concentration mill, a power plant, a hospital, bunkhouses, a general store, a school, a recreation hall, and a 196-mile railroad (the Copper River and Northwestern Railway) connecting the mines to the port at Cordova. At peak production, Kennecott employed 600 workers and shipped ore worth $200 million (over $4 billion in today's dollars).
The copper ran out in 1938. The Kennecott Copper Corporation shut down operations with startling speed, ordering the last train out on November 11, 1938. Workers left personal belongings in their bunks. The hospital still had medicine on the shelves. The machine shop still had tools on the benches. For decades, the buildings sat in the shadow of the Wrangell Mountains, slowly weathering but remarkably preserved by the dry, cold climate. The National Park Service acquired the property in 1998 and has since stabilized several structures. Today, you can walk through the mill building, peer into the machine shop, and stand on the same rail platform where the last load of copper left the valley.
Getting to Kennecott requires a 60-mile drive on the McCarthy Road, a gravel road built on the old railroad bed that dead-ends at the Kennicott River. From there, a footbridge crosses the river to the town of McCarthy, and a shuttle or 5-mile walk takes you to the mine complex.
3. Portage Ghost Town
Portage was a small railroad community on the Alaska Railroad line between Anchorage and Seward, nestled at the head of Turnagain Arm about 50 miles south of Anchorage. Before March 27, 1964, it was a quiet stop where a few dozen families lived alongside the tracks. After that date, Portage ceased to exist.
The Good Friday earthquake, at magnitude 9.2, was the second most powerful earthquake ever recorded by modern instruments. Its effects were catastrophic across southcentral Alaska, but Portage suffered a uniquely devastating fate. The ground beneath the town subsided between 6 and 10 feet during the quake, dropping the entire community below the high tide level of Turnagain Arm. Within hours, saltwater from the arm began flooding the sunken town. Every high tide brought more water. Within weeks, the buildings were standing in a salt marsh. The spruce trees died from the saltwater intrusion, turning into the bleached-white "ghost forest" that still lines the Seward Highway today.
The residents evacuated and never returned. The Alaska Railroad relocated its station. The old townsite sat in brackish water for years, buildings slowly collapsing as the salt ate through foundations and wooden frames. The Portage Glacier Highway (now the Seward Highway) was rerouted and raised above the new flood zone. Today, the ghost forest of dead spruce trees is visible from the highway pullouts along Turnagain Arm, and remnants of building foundations can be spotted during low tide from the road. The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, located near the old townsite, provides some interpretive signage about the earthquake's effects.
The area is freely accessible from the Seward Highway (Alaska Route 1). Pull off at the marked scenic overlooks between mileposts 75 and 80 to see the ghost forest. The actual townsite is boggy, tidal, and difficult to walk through, especially at higher tides.
4. Dyea
Dyea was once the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush and, for a single frantic year, one of the busiest ports on the Pacific coast. In 1897, when news of gold on the Klondike River reached Seattle and San Francisco, tens of thousands of prospectors headed north. Dyea, at the head of Taiya Inlet near present-day Skagway, was the starting point for the Chilkoot Trail, the shortest route over the coastal mountains to the Yukon goldfields. By the winter of 1897-98, the town had swelled to an estimated 8,000 people. Wharves stretched into the inlet, hotels and saloons lined a mile-long main street, and packers charged exorbitant fees to haul supplies over the 3,500-foot Chilkoot Pass.
The boom was ferociously short-lived. In 1898, the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad was completed through rival Skagway, 9 miles to the south. The railroad made the brutal Chilkoot Trail unnecessary, and Dyea's entire reason for existing evaporated overnight. By 1903, the population had dropped to a handful of families. The post office closed. Buildings were disassembled for lumber or simply left to rot. The Taiya River, prone to flooding, gradually washed away whatever the abandonment didn't destroy.
Today, Dyea is part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. Almost nothing remains above ground. The townsite is a flat, grassy tidal area at the end of Dyea Road, about 9 miles northwest of Skagway. Wooden pilings from the wharves poke out of the mud at low tide. A few foundation outlines are visible in the brush. The National Park Service maintains interpretive signs, a small campground, and the trailhead for the Chilkoot Trail. The Slide Cemetery, where 60 to 70 victims of the April 3, 1898 Palm Sunday avalanche on the Chilkoot Trail are buried, sits on a wooded hillside above the river.
Dyea is accessible by car from Skagway via the 9-mile Dyea Road, which is paved for the first portion and gravel for the remainder. The townsite is open year-round, though the road may be impassable in winter.
5. Naval Air Facility Adak
Adak is one of the most remote abandoned military bases in the world. The island sits near the western end of the Aleutian chain, roughly 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, closer to Russia than to the Alaskan mainland. During World War II, the U.S. military established a major base here after the Japanese invaded the nearby islands of Attu and Kiska in 1942. At its wartime peak, Adak hosted over 100,000 military personnel. The Navy built hangars, barracks, mess halls, an underground command center, fuel depots, and runways capable of handling heavy bombers.
After the war, Adak transitioned into a Cold War naval air station, serving as a forward operating base for submarine surveillance and aerial patrols over the North Pacific. The facility was home to about 6,000 people, military personnel and their families, with a McDonald's, a bowling alley, a movie theater, and a school. It was a complete American town transplanted to one of the most inhospitable islands on earth, where winds regularly exceed 100 mph and horizontal rain is more common than sunshine.
The Cold War ended, and the Base Realignment and Closure Commission designated Adak for closure in 1995. The Navy departed in March 1997. Almost everything was left behind. Houses with furniture still inside, warehouses full of equipment, an intact McDonald's (briefly the westernmost McDonald's in the United States), and miles of roads connecting buildings that no one uses. The Aleut Corporation took ownership of much of the island, and a tiny community of about 100 people remains in a few maintained buildings. But the vast majority of the base sits empty, battered by Aleutian storms, slowly filling with mold and rust. The isolation is total. Flights from Anchorage are infrequent, expensive, and often canceled by weather.
6. Ukivok Village (King Island)
Ukivok is among the most visually astonishing abandoned settlements in the world. The Inupiat village clings to the steep granite face of King Island, a tiny rocky spire rising from the Bering Sea about 40 miles off the coast of mainland Alaska near Nome. For centuries, the Aseuluk people (King Island Inupiat) lived on this improbable perch, building their homes on stilts driven into the cliff face, connected by wooden walkways and ladders that switchbacked up the 700-foot-tall island. In winter, the village was surrounded by sea ice, and hunters traveled across the frozen Bering Sea to the mainland. In summer, walrus, seal, and seabird hunting sustained the community.
The village's destruction came not from nature but from government policy. In the 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the village school, declaring the island too remote and dangerous for a permanent educational facility. Without a school, families with children had no choice but to relocate to Nome on the mainland. By 1959, most families had left. The last year-round residents departed by 1967. The village has sat empty ever since, its wooden houses still perched on their stilts, slowly collapsing under decades of Bering Sea storms.
Ukivok remains deeply significant to the King Island Inupiat community, many of whom still live in Nome and maintain cultural ties to the island. The village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Access is extremely difficult: King Island has no harbor, no airstrip, and no maintained infrastructure. The only way to reach it is by boat from Nome during the brief summer window when sea ice has cleared, and landings on the island's rocky shore require calm seas and considerable skill. Several King Islanders have organized occasional return trips over the years, and a few documentary crews have made the journey.
This is not a casual day trip. Visiting Ukivok requires planning, a seaworthy vessel, favorable weather, and respect for the cultural significance of the site to the King Island Inupiat people.
7. Kiska Island WWII Ruins
Kiska holds a distinction that no other place in Alaska shares: it was occupied by a foreign military force during World War II. On June 6, 1942, Japanese forces landed on Kiska Island in the western Aleutians as part of the same strategic offensive that included the attack on Midway. For over a year, the Japanese garrison of roughly 5,000 troops held the island, building submarine pens, anti-aircraft batteries, bunkers, barracks, and a small harbor. American bombers pounded the island repeatedly from bases on Adak and Amchitka.
The story took a bizarre turn on July 28, 1943. Under cover of dense Aleutian fog, the Japanese Navy evacuated the entire garrison of 5,183 men in a single operation lasting just 55 minutes. The Americans didn't know. On August 15, 1943, a combined force of 34,000 American and Canadian troops stormed Kiska's beaches expecting fierce resistance. They found the island empty. In the fog and confusion of the landing, Allied troops fired on each other, killing 28 Americans and wounding 50 more. Four destroyers struck mines. It was one of the war's strangest episodes.
After the war, the Americans also departed, leaving behind their own military debris alongside the Japanese infrastructure. Today, Kiska is one of the most pristine WWII battlefields in existence precisely because almost no one has been there since 1946. Japanese midget submarines still rest in the harbor. Anti-aircraft guns point at empty sky. Bunker complexes are intact, their concrete walls covered in Japanese characters. American Quonset huts, vehicles, and ammunition crates litter the landscape. The island is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and is uninhabited.
Reaching Kiska requires a multi-day boat charter from Adak or Dutch Harbor, careful planning around weather windows, and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit. Fewer people visit Kiska in a typical year than summit Everest.
8. Igloo City
You can't miss Igloo City. The structure is a four-story igloo-shaped building visible from the Parks Highway (Alaska Route 3) between Anchorage and Denali National Park, roughly 180 miles north of Anchorage near Cantwell. It looks like a giant white igloo, because that's exactly what it was meant to be: a roadside hotel shaped like the most stereotypical Alaskan structure imaginable.
Leon Smith, a local businessman, began construction in the early 1970s. His vision was simple and commercially logical: build a hotel at the midpoint of the highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks, shape it like a giant igloo to attract road-tripping tourists, and fill the rooms every summer. The building rose to four stories, with a steel frame wrapped in urethane foam insulation and fiberglass. Smith reportedly sank his life savings into the project.
It never opened. The building failed to meet Alaska's building code requirements. Fire safety, structural integrity, and insulation standards were not met, and Smith couldn't afford the modifications required to bring the structure into compliance. He tried for years to resolve the issues, but the building sat unfinished, with window openings covered in plywood and interior spaces that were never completed. Smith died in 1999, and the property changed hands several times. A 2012 auction attracted a new buyer, and there were brief moments of renewed hope for the project, but nothing materialized.
As of 2026, Igloo City stands as it has for over 50 years: a bizarre, photogenic, and thoroughly abandoned roadside attraction. The exterior is weathered but intact. The plywood window covers have faded to gray. A chain-link fence surrounds the property, and "No Trespassing" signs are posted. But the building is visible from the highway, and the pullout where tourists stop for photos is one of the most popular non-official stops on the drive to Denali. It's become an icon of Alaska's quirky roadside culture, a monument to one man's big idea that simply couldn't cross the finish line.
9. Fortymile Mining District
The Fortymile River area holds the title of Alaska's first major gold strike. In 1886, prospectors Howard Franklin and a small group of miners discovered coarse gold on a tributary of the Fortymile River near the Canadian border. Within months, hundreds of miners flooded into the area, establishing a string of camps and settlements along the river system. Franklin, the informal hub, grew into a supply center with trading posts, saloons, and a steamboat landing. At its peak in the early 1890s, the district supported an estimated 1,000 miners working claims along the river and its tributaries.
The Fortymile district's downfall was its own success. News of the gold strikes spread downriver and inspired further prospecting across Alaska and the Yukon. When richer and more accessible deposits were found at Birch Creek (Circle) in 1893 and then at the Klondike in 1896, the Fortymile miners abandoned their claims in droves. The stampede to the Klondike emptied the Fortymile camps almost overnight. Men left cabins with food still on the table, tools still in the ground, and sluice boxes still in the creeks. Franklin, Jack Wade, Chicken, and Steel Creek all shrank to a handful of holdouts.
Today, the Fortymile Mining District is a scattered collection of ruins along the Taylor Highway and its side roads in eastern Alaska. Jack Wade, once a busy dredge-mining camp, is marked by rusting mining equipment and collapsed cabins. The Jack Wade Dredge No. 1, a massive gold dredge from the early 1900s, sits frozen in the creek where it last operated. Franklin's townsite is accessible only by river. Chicken (population about 7 in winter) survives as a seasonal tourist stop with a few original buildings. The area is managed by the BLM and is open to the public, though roads are rough, services are nonexistent, and the nearest gas station is in Tok, over 100 miles away.
10. Portlock
Portlock is Alaska's most unsettling ghost town. The small fishing village once sat on the southern shore of the Kenai Peninsula, on Port Chatham at the entrance to Cook Inlet, accessible only by boat. In the early 20th century, Portlock and the neighboring settlement of Port Chatham were home to several dozen families, mostly of Russian, Alutiiq, and mixed heritage, who made their living from fishing, trapping, and cannery work.
Starting in the 1930s and accelerating through the 1940s, residents began reporting disturbing events. Hunters went into the woods and didn't come back. Bodies were found in conditions that suggested something other than natural death or bear attacks. Traps were destroyed. Heavy equipment was moved. Footprints of enormous size appeared in the mud around the settlements. The local Alutiiq people attributed the events to the Nantiinaq, a large, hairy creature from their oral tradition, roughly equivalent to Bigfoot or Sasquatch in other indigenous traditions. Whether the cause was a predatory animal, a human perpetrator, or something else entirely, the fear was real and cumulative.
By the early 1950s, every resident of Portlock and Port Chatham had left. The last families relocated to communities on the Homer side of Kachemak Bay. The buildings they left behind gradually collapsed under the rain, snow, and dense coastal vegetation. Today, almost nothing stands above the undergrowth. The site is accessible only by boat or floatplane from Homer, about 25 miles across Kachemak Bay. There are no trails, no signage, and no maintained structures. The forest has consumed everything.
Portlock's story has become one of Alaska's most persistent pieces of folklore. Multiple books, documentaries, and podcasts have covered the Nantiinaq legend and the emptying of Port Chatham. The actual site, however, remains extraordinarily difficult to reach and rarely visited.
Beyond the List
Alaska's abandoned places stretch far beyond these ten sites. Mining camps dot the Interior from Fairbanks to the Canadian border. WWII and Cold War military ruins are scattered across the Aleutian chain. Earthquake-shattered communities line the coast from Valdez to Kodiak. Native villages emptied by government policy stand silent in every corner of the state. With 89 verified abandoned locations on the Alaska urbex map, the list keeps growing. The GPS coordinates are free. The map is open. The hardest part is getting there.
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