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Valdez, a port city on the northeastern tip of Alaska's Prince William Sound was incorporated in 1901 and presently has a population of 4300 people. The town was not originally at this location but was relocated here after the 1964 Alaska Earthquake destroyed a good portion of the original site. Outside of the harbor area, the city does not have a traditional cohesive downtown. A good number of commercial and municipal buildings occupy the downtown area but are seperated by vacant lots and generously wide roads.
Because The City of Valdez averages 30 feet of snow (the most of any sea-level community in North America) this same intersection in the winter looks completely different. Any vacant areas are filled with snow and the streets seem to be hallways bounded by vertical walls of snow sometimes ten feet high.
The terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is located across the harbor from the city. The oil business, tourism and commercial fishing are the industries that are most important to the Valsez economy.
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Approximately half of Alaska's 710,231 residents (as per the 2010 United States Census) live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska is the least densely populated state of the U.S.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska
