Kincaid Park covers 1,517 acres (614 ha) on Point Campbell, between Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at the head of Cook Inlet, 5.2 miles (8 km) southwest of downtown Anchorage, Alaska. The park was created in 1978 on the site of a deactivated Nike missile base and has since developed into a world-class Nordic ski facility.

Captain James Cook explored the area in 1778 while searching for the Northwest Passage. Captain George Vancouver, who had sailed with Cook, returned in 1794 to conduct further surveys and charting. His journals record the naming of Cook Inlet, Turnagain Island (now Fire Island), and Points Woronzof, MacKenzie, and Campbell, at the junction of Knik and Turnagain Arms. Vancouver named Point Campbell but did not attribute it to a specific person, leaving room for later speculation. The most likely namesake is Sir Archibald Campbell, a British Army officer who served as governor of Jamaica in 1782. Vancouver was introduced to Campbell while serving as a lieutenant in the West Indies under Sir Alan Gardner from 1784 to 1789, during which time he conducted his first independent marine surveys. Campbell died in England in 1791, just days before Vancouver set sail for the Pacific Northwest.

Anchorage began as a tent city on Ship Creek in 1912; by 1915 the area to the south, around Point Campbell, had become the Point Campbell Military Reservation. In 1959 the 4th Missile Battalion became Alaska’s first operational Nike-Hercules unit. Positioned on three sides of Anchorage, with sites at Battery A, B, and C, the unit stored and launched Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missiles. Battery A stood on the Point Campbell Military Reservation. The unit was deactivated in 1979, and the land was transferred to the Municipality of Anchorage. In 1983 it came under the Parks and Recreation Department and was added to Kincaid Park, where the Nordic Ski Club of Anchorage was already developing a network of ski trails.  Read more here and here. Explore more of Kincaid Park and Point Campbell here: