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Visitors to Denali National Park will be able to motor over the full park road starting next year for the first time since a landslide made the route impassable in the late summer of 2021, the National Park Service said Thursday.
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Construction crews have completed a 475-foot-long bridge that allows vehicles to avoid an ongoing thaw-induced slide at a spot called Pretty Rocks, located about midway along the park’s 92-mile road.
“This is an exciting milestone for Denali and for everyone who has worked over the past five years to restore access to the west end of the park road,” Brooke Merrell, superintendent of Denali National Park and Preserve, said in a statement.
“Building a bridge across an active landslide in one of the most remote and challenging environments in the country required extraordinary collaboration, innovation and determination. We are grateful to the Federal Highway Administration, our project partners and the many people who made this possible, and we look forward to welcoming visitors back to the west end by bus in 2027,” she said.
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Visitors on foot and bicycle are now allowed to cross the bridge to travel on the road beyond, the Park Service said. However, a bit more work must be completed to ensure that the road section on the west side of the bridge is ready for vehicle traffic next year.
The bridge project cost about $230 million, officials said. The money came from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, disaster-response funds and other sources.
The Pretty Rocks landslide is one of about 150 documented slides along the route, which is the sole road running through the park. But it is the slide that has caused the most trouble.
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