RV rental Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, AK: Motorhome rentals, camper van rentals and more

When reading the fact sheet for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, you'd think it'd be the most popular national park in the United States. In fact, the park only receives roughly 87,000 visitors per year. Contrast that with Yellowstone National Park, which receives over 4 million visitors per year. Wrangell-St. Elias' location and inaccessibility keep all but the most die-hard RV campers elsewhere. But it's definitely worth the effort.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is the largest national park in the United States at 13.2 million acres. To put that in perspective, the park boundaries could hold both New Hampshire and Vermont within it. It's located in the southeastern corner of Alaska, bordering both the Yukon Territory and the Gulf of Alaska. There are only two roads into this massive preserve, and both of them are dirt. The park houses four mountain ranges, twelve volcanoes, and has the highest concentration of glaciers in North America. Water from these glaciers eventually finds its way into the Copper River, a world-famous spawning area for sockeye and Chinook salmon.

Natives lived in these barren ice fields for over 10,000 years, mastering the art of winter survival. Europeans eventually arrived in pursuit of the park’s mineral resources, including copper and gold, and opened some of the largest mines in Alaska. These mines are preserved today, though some small-scale extraction still occurs. The incredibly massive and intact ecosystems of Wrangell-St. Elias earned it status as a World Heritage Site in 1979, followed by designation as a National Park and Preserve a year later in 1980. Don’t let its location spook you – finding a rental RV in Valdez-Cordova County and exploring the Wrangell-St. Elias area will reward you in countless ways.