Click on the Denali South View image to enlarge

Denali South View

Denali South View is taken at the viewpoint in Denali State Park in Alaska. This Denali South View is at milepost 135.2 on the George Parks Highway.

Denali State Park is an area that covers 325, 240 acres. This park where Denali South View can be seen is almost half the size of the State of Rhode Island. Denali State Park is approximately 100 miles north of Anchorage Alaska. The park is divided in half by the George Parks Highway.

The terrain of Denali State Park ranges from lowland streams to alpine tundra. Denali South View dominates the landscape of the park.

Denali State Park was created in 1970 and was expanded in 1976. The park shares a boundary with Denali National Park and Preserve.

The Denali South View wayside is an excellent viewing location of the Alaska Range. There are excellent interpretive trails, viewing platforms, viewing scopes and natural history interpretive panels.

Being able to see a view of the mountain landscape at Denali South View is based on weather conditions. The size of Denali is so massive that it creates its own weather patterns, and it can often be covered in clouds. It is the third most prominent mountain in the world after Mount Everest and Anconcagua with an elevation of 20,320 feet.

The Koyukon Athabaskan people who inhabit the area around the mountain referred to the peak as Dinale or Denali (“the high one” or “the great one”). In the 1890′s it was named after President William McKinley by a gold prospector to show political support for the President.

This massive mountain as seen in the Denali South View photograph continues to have controversy regarding the naming of the mountain. In 1975 attempts were made to formally change the Geographic name to Denali. A congressman representing President McKinley’s hometown blocked efforts for the name Denali to be the nationally recognized name for the mountain.

Whatever you choose to call the mountain, Denali or McKinley, Denali South View is an excellent roadside area to view “the great one”.