Glenn Highway

Independence Mine ruins

The Glenn Highway is a 135-mile route that begins in downtown Anchorage and heads northeast to follow Alaska Highway 1 beside the braided Matanuska River for more than half its length.

From Anchorage to Palmer the road is mostly across the 500,000-acre expanse of Chugach State Park.The route goes along the north side of the Chugach Mountains and offers some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth. From Palmer east, the route drops into the glacier-carved Matanuska Valley and into the heart of some of Alaska's most historic mining regions. At the end of the byway segment is Eureka Summit, a vantage point from which four of Alaska's major mountain ranges can be seen: The Alaska Range, the Chugach Mountains, the Talkeetna Mountains and the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains.