(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Valdez Alaska is a city in Valdez-Cordova Census Area of Alaska. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 4,015.

Geography
Valdez is located near the head of a deep fjord in the northeast section of Prince William Sound in Alaska. It is surrounded by the Chugach Mountains, which are heavily glaciated. Valdez is the northernmost port in North America that is ice-free year-round. The northernmost point of the coastal Pacific temperate rain forest is in Valdez, on Blueberry Hill.

History
The port of Valdez was named in 1790 by the Spanish explorer Don Salvador Fidalgo after the Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdés y Basán. Because the Port of Valdez was an ice-free port, a town developed there in 1898. Some steamship companies promoted the Valdez Glacier Trail as a better way to reach the Klondike gold fields or as a better way to find new gold fields in Alaska than the route from Skagway. The prospectors who believed the promotion found that they had been deceived. The glacier trail was twice as long and steep as reported and many died attempting the crossing.

The Richardson Highway was built in 1899 and the early 1900s to connect Valdez to the interior of Alaska. It was a summer-only highway until 1950, when it became a year-round route.

The city was destroyed in the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. Liquefaction of the glacial silt that formed the city's foundation led to massive underwater landslides, causing a section of the city's shoreline to break off and sink into the sea. The underwater soil displacement caused a tsunami 30 feet high to slam the coast. In Valdez, 32 people lost their lives, most of them on the city dock, meeting a supply ship. The original town site was abandoned; the Army Corps of Engineers transported 60 surviving houses to firmer foundations, reestablishing the city at its present site.

From 1975-1977, the Trans-Alaska pipeline was built to carry oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in northern Alaska to a terminal in Valdez, the nearest ice-free port, where the oil is loaded onto tanker ships for transport. The construction and operation of the pipeline and terminal boosted the economy of Valdez.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred as the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was leaving the terminal at Valdez full of oil. The spill occurred at Bligh Reef, about 40 km (25 miles) from Valdez. Although the oil did not reach Valdez, it destroyed much of the marine life in the surrounding area. The clean-up of the oil caused a short-term boost to the economy of Valdez but contributed to the bankruptcy of the neighboring Chugach Corporation, which had partially depended on the sea for its livelihood.