Point MacKenzie is on the northern shore of Cook Inlet, at the entrance to Knik Arm, about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Eagle River and 3.2 miles (5 km) northwest of downtown Anchorage, Alaska. The point was named by Captain George Vancouver on May 4th, 1794, for the Right Honourable James Stuart Mackenzie, a Scottish politician and astronomer. The point comprises glacioestuarine deposits from the late Pleistocene, chiefly sand and gravel. These deposits are layered over the Bootlegger Cove Formation, which consists of silt and clay up to 115 feet (35 m) thick, and has been radiocarbon-dated to between 16,500 and 14,000 years ago.

When Europeans began exploring Alaska in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the upper Cook Inlet region was home to dozens of Dena’ina (Tanaina) Athabaskan villages, whose people were sustained by the area’s rich diversity of fish and wildlife. The upper Cook Inlet Dena’ina called Point MacKenzie “Dilhi Tunch’del’usht Beydegh,” meaning “point where we transport hooligan.” It was a trade site where the Dghelay Teht’ana, the people of the Talkeetna Mountains, traded with the Knik Arm Dena’ina. Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey surveyed the shoreline during Vancouver’s expedition and noted shoals extending over five miles from shore between the West Foreland and Point MacKenzie, as well as evidence of violent winds from the many trees that had fallen toward the west and northwest.

In 1968, shortly after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, a planned community called “Seward’s Success” was proposed for Point MacKenzie. The megaproject envisioned a fully enclosed dome housing 40,000 residents, with residential, office, recreational and commercial space, its temperature controlled year-round at 68°F (20°C). The glass shell would have functioned as a greenhouse, while energy was to be generated from natural gas available on-site. Transportation between Seward’s Success and Anchorage would initially have been provided by a high-speed tramway across Knik Arm, with a monorail eventually connecting the two cities; cars were not to be permitted. Within the dome, moving sidewalks would serve as the primary means of getting around. The idea was abandoned in 1972 following delays in development of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The name alludes to “Seward’s Folly,” a popular epithet for the 1867 Alaska Purchase advocated by Secretary of State William H. Seward. Read more here and here. Explore more of Point MacKenzie and Knik Arm here.