Get to know Anchorage through these 6 neighborhoods

27.11.2024 - 13:29 / lonelyplanet.com

Nov 26, 2024 • 6 min read

Founded a little over a century ago, the largest city in Alaska is composed of neighborhoods with a newness and spaciousness you won’t find in denser, older places.

Urban districts this far north are spread out and subtly influenced by the yawning wilderness that surrounds them. And you might be surprised at just how cosmopolitan some of them are: Anchorage is home to the single most statistically diverse neighborhood in the USA.

In these six neighborhoods, you’ll be able to sample some of the city’s unique flavors, many of them low-cost or even free.

Best for history and museums

Since many come to Anchorage as a stopping-off point for excursions elsewhere in the state, Downtown is only neighborhood many visitors will see. Here is where you’ll find the bulk of the city’s nice hotels, the state’s best museum, and all the requisite shops and restaurants. While on the low-rise, low-key side, the area has its quirks, such as the world’s only urban king salmon fishery at Ship Creek.

Ship Creek is where Anchorage began as a tent camp, in 1915; the settlement soon relocated to more-stable bluffs south of the river. These bluffs are home to some of the oldest buildings still standing in town, including the Oscar Anderson house (now a museum), one of the first solid structures to grace the urban grid. Nearby, another historic property, the Copper Whale Inn, offers one of Downtown’s more atypical accommodation options.

Until the 1920s, forest flourished right up to the edge of 10th Ave, and what is now Delaney Park between present-day 9th and 10th Aves served as a firebreak. The more spread-out residential neighborhood that lies to the south – the so-called South Addition – was built in the 1930s and ’40s.

Best for reasonably priced accommodation

South of Downtown, Midtown is a symmetrical grid of shopping malls, chain hotels and modern bar-grills serving craft beer and burgers. What it lacks in dashing good looks, it makes up for in convenience.

With a growing number of affordable, mid-range hotels, this neighborhood can offer better value than Downtown, as long as you’re up for a bit of urban walking. And you won’t have to roam far to eat well. Midtown and its adjacent neighborhoods of North Star and Taku-Campbell offer several decent breakfast spots, a good stash of Korean restaurants (an Anchorage specialty) and one of the city’s favorite destination breweries: Moose’s Tooth, a made-in-heaven marriage of gourmet pizzas and custom-brewed beer.

The neighborhood’s only real green spot is 15-acre Cuddy Family Midtown Park, which boasts a giant kids’ playground and waterfowl-filled lagoon. The southeastern corner of the district is brushed by the 7-mile Campbell Creek Trail, the western