Kobuk Valley National Park

Nearly half a million caribou migrate through Kobuk Valley National Park twice a year – north in the spring, south in the fall. Their tracks crisscross the 25 square miles of the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes. The lofty dunes, created by sand deposited from retreating glaciers, are a sculpted desert in the middle of a wilderness of wetlands. This is the only place on the planet to find the fuchsia Kobuk locoweed. The Kobuk River winds through the park, flanked by the Baird and Waring mountains. At Onion Portage, a National Historic Landmark, people gathered for 9,000 years to harvest caribou as they forded the river during migration