Denali National Park

Denali National Park is best known for Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet the tallest peak in North America.

Several hundred thousand people a year visit the Massachusetts-size park to see the pride of the Alaska Range as well as the bears, caribou and wolves that live in the park.
Denali's location
Denali National Park straddles the Alaska Range. The park entrance is 237 highway miles north of Anchorage and 125 miles south of Fairbanks. Mount McKinley itself is about 140 miles north of Anchorage as the raven flies.

Population of the Denali area
McKinley Village, a rural area south of the park entrance, has about 140 year-round residents. Healy, 11 miles north, has 1,000 residents.

Notable
Denali National Park was known as McKinley National Park when it was created in 1917. Access at first was by railroad from the 1920s to mid-1950s, when the Denali Highway (Highway 8) reached it from the east. The park was opened to Anchorage and Fairbanks highway traffic in 1968 when the George Parks Highway (Highway 3) reached it.

In 1980, the park was expanded to 6 million acres (9,375 square miles) and the name was changed from Mount McKinley NP to Denali NP. The park gets 360,000 visitors a year.

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