Princeton Glacier drains into Nassau Fjord in Prince William Sound on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula, about 37 miles (60 km) south-southeast of Whittier and 38 miles (61 km) east-northeast of Seward, Alaska. The glacier originates in the Sargent Icefield and flows southeast for five miles (8 km) to its terminus at a lake roughly two miles (3.2 km) north of Nassau Fjord. It was named in 1909 for Princeton University by George Perkins of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. George W. Perkins was a New York City politician and businessman associated with J.P. Morgan and Company and the Guggenheim family, who financed a merger of the Alaska Syndicate with the Alaska Steamship Company in 1907. In 1909 Perkins acquired the Company’s steamship Yucatan for private travel in Alaska; accompanied by business associates and family members, he visited sites in British Columbia, Southeast Alaska, the Gulf of Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands.

Much of the Prince William Sound region is rimmed by mountains dissected by fjords. These fjords were occupied by ice during the Pleistocene until around 10,000 years ago, and some glaciers still maintain iceberg-calving margins. Over the past century, the terminal margins of these glaciers have fluctuated, with episodes of glacial advance occurring around 3,600 years ago, in the 7th century, and most recently between 1300 and 1850, a period known as the Little Ice Age. Records of glacial fluctuation can provide insights into decadal- to centennial-scale climate variations and their causes. Research has shown that calendar dates can often be assigned to glacial advances by dating trees affected by glacial processes.

The Princeton Glacier valley is currently devoid of living spruce or hemlock older than a few decades; however, abundant subfossil hemlock logs within a kilometer of the 1993 terminus attest to a previously extensive forest. Tree-ring analysis provides a chronology of the interaction between these forests and glacial activity. The data show that the glacial record of western Prince William Sound over the past 1,000 years closely mirrors, on decadal timescales, other glacial histories around the Gulf of Alaska. Precise age control through tree-ring cross-dating enables recognition of these synchronous glacial advances and provides a strong basis for comparison with other climate proxy data from coastal sites along the northeast Pacific. Read more here and here. Explore more of Princeton Glacier and Nassau Fjord here: