Last Updated 4/30/24
Unlike nearly all other parks I cover, there are parks in Alaska that I don’t encourage people to attempt to visit in an electric car or truck. Why? Because these are the least visited national parks in the United States for a reason. Located in remote Alaska, some of these parks are located entirely above the Arctic Circle.
For some of them, there are no roads that go into the park, and no official trails. The only ICE vehicle that can reach some of these Alaskan parks is a helicopter or a plane. For others, you can only visit by boat. So, your EV isn’t going to get to all of them any more than an ICE vehicle possibly can. Sorry.
These parks include:
- Gates of the Arctic National Park
- Glacier Bay National Park/Preserve
- Katmai National Park/Preserve
- Kobuk Valley National Park
- Lake Clark National Park/Preserve
- Admiralty Island National Monument
- Alagnak Wild River
- Aleutian Islands World War II National Monument
- Aniakchak National Monument/Preserve
- Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
- Cape Kursenstern National Preserve
- Denali National Preserve
- Klondike Gold Rush NHP
- Misty Fjords National Monument
- Noatak National Preserve
- Stika NHP
- Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve
But, despite the challenge, some EVs have been almost to the edge of these car-inaccessible parks. If you want to learn about how it was done, you can watch this video by TFL Truck:
There has also been an EV expedition/rally to Olitok Point (the northernmost road you can reach in the United States), but this required four temporary charging stations to be installed along the route that grazes the edge of Gates of the Arctic. Normally, you’d be in for what TLF was in for in the Lightning going into those areas.
So, for this reason, this page is more of a placeholder than a guide for these Alaskan parks. EV charging infrastructure needs to improve to make EV travel to the edges of them a reality, but you’ll often still need to walk or catch a charter drop-off flight if you want to visit the actual parks. Future eVTOL aircraft might make electric travel to the actual park a reality, though!
Why Most People Won’t Get There In An EV
- Even the park itself does not maintain a presence in some Alaskan parks. The headquarters is in Fairbanks, hundreds of miles away from some of them.
- The northernmost EV fast charging is also in Fairbanks, and that’s over 250 miles of driving on steep terrain from Gates of the Arctic.
- The northernmost L2 EV charging station to the park is at Coldfoot Camp, 253 miles from Fairbanks.
- Some of these parks are on islands with no landing area and no ferry for cars.
Links To Further Park and Nearby Information
Featured image by National Park Service.