Midway down the wild, remote, and mostly roadless Alaska Peninsula lies one of the continent′s most fascinating recent volcanic features. Aniakchak is a large caldera formed by the collapse of a 7,000-foot volcanic mountain. Set inland in a place of frequent clouds and fierce storms, Aniakchak was unknown to all but area Natives until the 1920s, when geographers remotely plotting mountains along the caldera rim noticed that they formed a circle. In 1922, a geology field party gazed into the caldera itself and brought back news of its immense size.

This narrow stretch of the Alaska Peninsula boasts a rich human story, but its spacious promise of solitude also suggests: Here is the world as it was. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis have interrupted the human story, even burying it under volcanic ash. Yet the land abides as a wild place where humans can sense not just independence but interdependence—kinship, even—with the whole of the natural world. Here are grizzly bears, moose, and caribou on land; sea lions, seals, and other marine mammals; and geese, swans, and other waterfowl. Life has persisted here in the face of world-class catastrophic change. (Text from NPS brochure, Edited.)