The Best Moose Viewing Spots in Anchorage
More than 1,000 moose live year around inside greenbelts and neighborhoods throughout the Anchorage Bowl. It’s not unusual for cow moose to bed down twin calves in suburban backyards, or for a bull moose with a full rack of antlers to amble straight across busy a boulevard, halting traffic as it passes.
But catching a glimpse of the largest member of the deer family on purpose during your personal sight-seeing schedule can be challenging. One trick is to visit the city’s undeveloped areas with long, unobstructed views of moose habitat.
Kincaid Park at the west end of Raspberry Road contains hundreds of acres of moose browse and calving areas, and the animals often walk right along the access road or down the middle of the park’s wide trails.
With its large wetland and mile-long vistas, Potter Marsh offers a particularly easy place to spy moose from a distance. The animals often feed along the edge of the woods at the base of the mountains and can be seen from the boardwalk or pullouts along the road.
For the most intimate, up-close (and reliable) moose viewing, you can’t beat the Alaska Zoo in South Anchorage and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center at the head of Turnagain Arm. Both facilities provide natural habitats for captive or orphaned moose surrounded by fencing.
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Moose Viewing Spots
Here you’ll find one of the most accessible wildlife viewing areas in Alaska. The marsh is a rest area for migratory birds including trumpeter swans, rednecked grebes, golden eyes, and pintails. Also watch for beavers, moose and bald eagles. You may even spot salmon spawning in the deeper water.
This 134-acre park is set in the woods where, in 1964, an entire neighborhood slid into the ocean during last century’s most powerful earthquake. The earthquake was measured at a 9.2 on the Richter scale and lasted 4 minutes. Today, this tragic event is commemorated in Anchorage’s Earthquake Park, where you’ll find signs explaining the circumstances of the quake and its effect on the area.
At the 200-acre Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, see Alaskan wildlife up close. The center’s mission is to provide refuge for orphaned, injured, and ill animals — those that can’t survive in the wild. The center, which opened to the public in 1993, educates visitors about Alaska’s wildlife. Coyotes peer out from behind the brush while a bald eagle swoops in on the salmon remains left by a grizzly bear. Wood Bison plod through 65 acres of tidal ...more
Kincaid Park offers the easiest way to get deep in the woods right in town. It’s a mecca for outdoor sports of all kinds in a wilderness-like setting on the site of a former Cold War missile base. This 1,500-acre park sprawls over an ancient and rugged moraine at the southwest tip of the Anchorage Bowl at the west end of Raspberry Road. From its panoramic views of Denali and the vast Cook Inlet to its intimate deep woods enclaves, the park is ...more
The Alaska Zoo started in 1966 with one baby elephant named Annabelle that was won in a contest. Since then, it has expanded to include over 77 animals across 25 acres of the Anchorage hillside.
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