Valdez sits at the head of a deep fjord in Prince William Sound, boxed in by the Chugach Mountains and approached through one of Alaska's most dramatic road corridors. It is a working port, the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and a town whose modern story is marked by the 1964 earthquake and the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The landscape is the real reason to come. Columbia Glacier is reached by boat through iceberg-filled water, while Worthington Glacier is one of Alaska's easiest road-access glaciers. The drive in through Keystone Canyon passes sheer walls, waterfalls, and the old route toward the Interior.
Valdez works best if you give it a full day rather than treating it as the end of the highway. Take a glacier or wildlife cruise, stop properly in the canyon, and leave time for the Valdez Museum, where the town's gold rush, pipeline, earthquake, and oil-spill history come together.
Compared with Seward, Valdez feels more remote and less polished. That is part of the appeal: the harbour still belongs to fishing boats, snow piles high in winter, and the mountains press close enough to make the town feel borrowed from the weather.