Alaska

Alaska Railroad approves $137 million cruise port for Seward

Published

2 years ago

August 2, 2024

Alaska Railroad approves 7 million cruise port for Seward

A cruise ship with Norwegian Cruise Line docks in Seward on Monday, July 4, 2022. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

The Alaska Railroad this week approved a plan for construction of a new $137 million cruise ship port in Seward that is expected to open in time for the 2026 season.

In a special meeting Thursday, the railroad’s board voted to approve the purchase of the soon-to-be-built dock that can handle larger ships than the 60-year-old dock it will replace.

The vote will allow the railroad to enter into agreements with the project developer, The Seward Company, and other partners in the project, Meghan Clemens, a spokesperson with the railroad said. The paperwork should be signed this month, she said.

The deal, including debt, will be supported by an unusual, 30-year commitment with anchor tenant Royal Caribbean Group, according to a statement from the railroad. Royal Caribbean will have preferential berthing rights, but other cruise companies can also use the port.

[With commitment from Royal Caribbean, Alaska Railroad advances $137M plan to revamp Seward dock]

A computer rendering of the proposed dock. The Alaska Railroad is pursuing a $137 million plan to revamp its old cruise dock in Seward, after Royal Caribbean Group committed to a 30-year use of the new dock. (Rendering courtesy of The Seward Company)

“It’s a much-needed and highly anticipated project for our community,” said Kat Sorensen, city manager in the town of 3,000. “The cruise ship terminal in its current state is near the end of its useful life. To continue to see the economic impacts that tourism has in our community and our state, this terminal is definitely needed.”

The city of Seward owns the local power company and has applied for a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to pay for a shoreside electricity project, which would allow cruise ships to turn off idling engines when they’re in port, she said. That would reduce carbon emissions at the new port, she said.

[A dock project in Seward will bring even bigger cruise ships to Southcentral Alaska]

Under the plan, Anchorage-based Turnagain, a marine construction company, will build the port.

The railroad will purchase it upon completion.

“This new facility supports our commitment to deliver incredible experiences to our guests while also developing a state-of-the-art facility and community hub,” Preston Carnahan of Royal Caribbean said in the statement.

The effort won’t be delayed by the governor’s veto this week of a bill that would have provided legislative approval to issue bonds to help pay for the project, said Mickey Richardson, head of the Port of Tomorrow, which owns The Seward Company.

The bill was one of five adopted by the Alaska House after the constitutional deadline for the end of the legislative session. The governor had said the bills could face legal challenges, leading to his veto.

The railroad had already been pursuing alternative sources of funding in case a veto occurred, Clemens said. The railroad will use a commercial loan, along with approval from the Legislature in 2022 for issuing $60 million in bonds, to provide money up front.

Richardson said the primary cost of the project, including debt and maintenance over the decades to come, will be covered by revenue from Royal Caribbean’s long-term commitment.

Alaskans won’t bear expenses for the project, he said in an interview.

“It’s a clear win-win for the community of Seward, the railroad and the travel industry,” he said.

The existing passenger dock, owned by the railroad, must be replaced, said Bill O’Leary, chief executive of the Alaska Railroad.

The new facility will include a 68,000-square-foot terminal building. A 150-foot transfer span will connect cruise travelers to an Alaska Railroad train and other ground transportation.

The 750-foot, two-berth floating dock will be the largest floating pier in the state, Jason Davis, president of Turnagain, said in the statement.

Construction on the terminal is scheduled to begin this autumn after Seward’s cruise season ends, Richardson said. Construction of the pier will occur next autumn to avoid disrupting next summer’s cruise season.

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Alaska

Delegation Welcomes Corps Permit for King Cove Road

Published

10 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

Delegation Welcomes Corps Permit for King Cove Road

Locations of King Cove and Cold Bay on the Alaska Peninsula. Image-NOAA Charts

Anchorage, AK—U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Congressman Nick Begich (all R-Alaska) today applauded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) approval of a permit to facilitate construction of a life-saving road between the isolated community of King Cove, Alaska and nearby Cold Bay. The one-lane gravel connector will provide reliable transportation access from King Cove to Cold Bay, which is home to an all-weather airport.

“This is more good news for King Cove and all who care about the health, safety, and wellbeing of the hundreds of people who live there,” Murkowski said.“After decades of relentlessly making the case and pushing with everything we have, this life-saving road is finally almost a reality. A combination of careful analysis and common sense from the Trump administration—the Department of the Interior and now the Army Corps—have brought us to this point. I thank them for their continued commitment to protecting and improving these Alaskans’ lives.”

“For Alaskans, the decades-long King Cove Road impasse has been a symbol of an uncaring, out-of-touch, faraway federal government that prioritizes the lives of birds over people,” said Sullivan. “The great residents of King Cove time and again have kept hope alive, despite setbacks, most recently when the Biden administration disregarded the voices of the community and withdrew the previously approved land exchange. The permit issued by the Corps of Engineers today is vindication for King Cove, putting us closer than ever before to delivering a lifesaving, 11-mile, single-lane gravel road to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay. I want to thank the Administration, especially Secretary Burgum and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Telle, for listening to Alaskans, for caring about their safety and well-being, and for putting us on the cusp of a historic breakthrough for safe and reliable access for King Cove.”

“This permit approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a critical milestone in a decades-long effort to provide the people of King Cove with the infrastructure they need to build an essential life-saving road,” said Begich. “For nearly 50 years, the community has advocated for a road connecting King Cove to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay. This project addresses an obvious public safety need and will provide a reliable route for emergency access in adverse weather conditions. I commend everyone who helped move this project forward, from residents who never stopped advocating, to Secretary Burgum, the Army Corps of Engineers, Governor Dunleavy, and Alaska’s congressional delegation over many years.”

King Cove is located between two volcanic peaks near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, and its small gravel airstrip is typically closed by bad weather for more than 100 days each year. Many flights not canceled are delayed by wind, turbulence, fog, rain, or snow squalls; travel by boat is often impacted by waves that can top 12 feet and the lack of suitable dock infrastructure in Cold Bay. By comparison, Cold Bay, which is less than 30 miles from King Cove, has one of the longest runways in the state and it is closed an average of just 10 days per year.

At present, there are roads leading out of both King Cove and Cold Bay but no connection between them. The lack of dependable transportation access to Cold Bay routinely forces emergency medevacs from King Cove that risk the lives of patients and responders alike. It also creates significant quality-of-life issues, ranging from King Cove residents’ inability to regularly receive mail to week-long travel delays for students returning home from various activities.

King Cove residents have sought this life-saving connector road for decades. In late 2025, a major breakthrough occurred when the Trump administration conveyed490 federal acres to the King Cove Corporation in exchange for 1,739 acres of KCC-owned land near the Kinzarof Lagoon and the relinquishment of selection rights to more than 5,430 acres still owed to KCC under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The Corps permit issued this week is valid for five years and allows for dredge and fill activities to occur on just over five acres of land. For perspective, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge spans 315,000 acres and there are at least 130 million acres of wetlands across Alaska.

More information is available here.

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Alaska

An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post

Published

20 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post

In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.

For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.

That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.

“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.

“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”

When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”

An aerial view of Anchorage, Alaska. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.

Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.

The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.

All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.

One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.

Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.

It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.

When Israel comes along for the ride

You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.

But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.

On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.

Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.

“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”

Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.

One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.

We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.

Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?

My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.

But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.

Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.

So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.

“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.

And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.

Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■

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Alaska

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

Published

1 day ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.

Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.

Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.

Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.

Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.

The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.

I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.

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