Cordova

There is no road into Cordova. You arrive by ferry across Prince William Sound or by small plane, and that single fact shapes everything about the town — it has kept Cordova a genuine, unpolished fishing community rather than a stop on anyone’s drive-through itinerary. I came in on the ferry from Whittier, a several-hour crossing past glaciers calving into the Sound, and the town that emerged from the mist at the end of it looked exactly like what it is: a working harbor with canneries, a handful of bars, and very little pretense.

Cordova exists because of the Copper River salmon run, widely regarded — including by chefs who have never been within a thousand kilometers of Alaska — as some of the best salmon in the world, the fish arriving unusually fat with oil after a grueling upstream migration that starts the moment they enter the silty river mouth. I was there during the opener, the single frenzied day each season when the fleet is allowed out, and the harbor emptied overnight and refilled by afternoon with boats riding low under their catch. I bought a fillet directly off a boat that had been caught roughly four hours earlier and cooked it that evening with nothing but salt, and it remains one of the best things I’ve eaten in Alaska.

Beyond the fishing, the Copper River Delta just outside town is one of the most important shorebird staging areas on the planet — millions of birds, principally western sandpipers, pass through during spring migration in numbers dense enough that flocks moving overhead sound like wind. The Copper River Highway, which dead-ends partway to the collapsed Million Dollar Bridge, took me out along the delta’s edge and to Childs Glacier, which calves directly into the Copper River with enough force that the resulting wave has, more than once, swept people off the opposite bank — a warning sign at the viewing area makes this point with commendable bluntness.

When to go: May for the Copper River Delta Shorebird Festival and peak migration. Late May through July for the salmon season, when the town’s identity is most visibly on display. The road to Childs Glacier is best from late spring through early fall.