Kern Creek flows southwest for 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from the Chugach Mountains to the northern shore of Turnagain Arm, between Portage and Girdwood, about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Anchorage and 16 miles (26 km) northwest of Whittier, Alaska. It drains a watershed of about 4,494 acres (1818 ha) underlain by sedimentary rocks of the Valdez Group, laid down in the Late Cretaceous and later accreted onto Alaska’s southern margin as part of the Chugach Prince William composite terrane. The creek runs through a steep, narrow, avalanche-prone valley of falls and cascades and deposits little gravel until it meets the glacier-carved fjord of the Arm. Local prospectors first used the name, and Lieutenant Joseph Herron of the U.S. Army reported it in 1899.

Turnagain Arm was Dena’ina country, and its people called it Tutl’uh, or “back water”. Prospectors worked Kern Creek in 1898 and 1903. In 1903 the Alaska Central Railway began work on a line north from Seward but went bankrupt after laying about 50 miles (80 km) of track. Reorganized as the Alaska Northern Railway, it extended the line about 20 miles (32 km) to Kern Creek, 71 miles (114 km) from Seward, by 1910, and a settlement called Kern grew at the end of the track. That company failed too. In 1914 Congress authorized a government railroad. In 1915 the Alaska Engineering Commission bought the Alaska Northern and moved the railroad’s headquarters from Seward to a construction camp on Ship Creek that became Anchorage, and construction resumed northward.

Steep mountains, a rock-bound shore and the second-highest tides in North America made winter railroading difficult between Portage and Anchorage. In the mountains south of Portage, the railroad’s snow gauges often showed 10 to 15 feet (3-5 m) of snow, and rotary snowplows pushed by two locomotives ran constantly from December to April. Snow sheds built at miles 53 and 75.5 in 1919 and 1920 carried avalanches over the track, but slides still killed: in 1920 a second slide killed six workers clearing debris near Girdwood. In 1964 the Good Friday earthquake dropped parts of the Arm by as much as 8 feet (2.4 m), flooding Portage and damaging track and highway embankments. Today Kern is a former settlement, and Kern Creek is a minor gold prospect that surveys judge to have little commercial promise. Slides still threaten the line: in January 2023 a freight train derailed on avalanche debris at milepost 71.5, close to the old end of track. Read more here and here. Explore more of Kern Creek and Turnagain Arm here: