Entry No. 18 — the Anchorage file — filed under: ghost forest
Girdwood Ghost Forest
Around milepost 90 of the Seward Highway, pale columns of long-dead trees stand on the Turnagain Arm mudflats — drowned when the 1964 quake dropped the ground 6.5 feet below the tide line and saltwater killed the freshwater forest. Dig down and there are the stumps of two earlier ghost forests from quakes ~900 and ~1600 years ago.
The move: Time it for low tide near sunset, pull off at the ghost-forest signs, and walk out among the bone-white trunks — eerie, beautiful, and a quiet conversation about deep time and the three forests stacked beneath your feet.
📍 Before you go This is a roadside stop on the Turnagain Arm corridor, an easy hour or so south of Anchorage — no trailhead or facilities, just gravel pull-offs near the marked ghost-forest signs. Heed the real hazard: the Arm's glacial-silt mudflats can act like quicksand, and the bore tide rushes in faster than you can walk, so stay near the firm bank and don't strike out far. The bare trunks show year-round, but warm months make the flats safer underfoot. Fold it into the drive with the Beluga Point bore-tide pullouts, the Alyeska tram in Girdwood, or Portage Glacier toward the far end of the Arm.
- 📍 Girdwood / Turnagain Arm
- 💸 Free
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Outdoors
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: earthquake.alaska.edu · uaa.alaska.edu
last checked: 2026-06-06