Earthquake Park

Earthquake Park occupies a distinctive piece of Anchorage history — the former L Street neighborhood that collapsed into Cook Inlet during the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, the largest seismic event ever recorded in North American history. The magnitude 9.2 quake struck on March 27, 1964, triggering a catastrophic landslide that swallowed 75 city blocks and dropped the land surface by as much as 11 feet, sweeping homes and infrastructure into the inlet in minutes. The park was established on the collapsed terrain to preserve the landscape and interpret what happened.

The most immediately striking feature of Earthquake Park is the ground itself. The humped, fractured terrain — so unlike Anchorage's otherwise flat coastal benchlands — is the preserved surface left by the Turnagain Heights landslide. Walking the park's path, visitors move across ground that heaved and liquefied during four and a half minutes of sustained shaking. Interpretive signs posted along the route explain the geology of the event, the mechanics of earthquake-induced liquefaction, and the human story of the neighborhood that was lost.

The park sits directly on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, Anchorage's 11-mile shared-use path along the Cook Inlet shoreline. Most visitors combine the park with a walk or bike ride along the coastal trail in either direction — west toward Point Woronzof or east toward downtown Anchorage and Westchester Lagoon. The views across Cook Inlet from the park's bluff edge take in Sleeping Lady (Mount Susitna) and, on clear days, Denali to the north.

Access is free. A paved parking lot at 4300 West Northern Lights Boulevard accommodates cars and bikes. The park is managed by the Municipality of Anchorage Parks and Recreation Department and is open at all hours year-round. The interpretive trail is paved and accessible. This is one of the few places in Anchorage where the physical evidence of the 1964 quake remains visible and interpretively marked — a sobering and historically significant stop on any Anchorage itinerary.