Best Things to Do in Alaska (2026 Guide)

In a city that sits between Cook Inlet and the Chugach Mountains, a cultural center on the northeast edge of Anchorage preserves and presents the heritage of Alaska’s Indigenous peoples with an ambition that extends beyond exhibition into living practice. The Alaska Native Heritage Center opened in 1999 as a gathering place built by and for Alaska Native communities, its design shaped by tribal consultation and its programs maintained through ongoing partnerships with Alaska Native organizations from across the state.

The center’s indoor Welcome House contains galleries, performance spaces, and demonstration areas where Alaska Native artists, storytellers, and cultural practitioners share knowledge with visitors throughout the day. The surrounding grounds feature six full-size traditional dwellings representing different regional cultures — an Athabascan house, a Yupik and Cup’ik structure, an Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik dwelling, and others — set along a small lake with wooded walking paths connecting them. Guides from the respective communities explain each structure’s construction, function, and cultural context.

Summer is the most active season, with daily cultural demonstrations and a full schedule of performances and activities. The center is open to the public from May through September; winter programming is more limited and oriented toward community events. Allow at least three hours for a thorough visit that includes the indoor galleries and the outdoor village walk. The center is located about six miles from downtown Anchorage.

What distinguishes the Heritage Center from comparable cultural institutions elsewhere is the degree of Indigenous authorship built into its operation — the voices explaining Alaskan Native cultures here are, with deliberate consistency, Alaska Native voices, giving the center a quality of authenticity that outside-curated exhibitions rarely achieve.

Rising from the waters of Frederick Sound and Chatham Strait in Southeast Alaska, Admiralty Island is a forested wilderness of nearly a million acres where the density of brown bears is among the highest in the world and bald eagles nest in coastal trees with a regularity that makes them unremarkable background details rather than rare sightings. The Tlingit people, who have lived here for thousands of years, call the island Kootznoowoo — Fortress of the Bears — a name that captures its essential character more precisely than any contemporary description.

The island is part of the Tongass National Forest and is managed largely as the Admiralty Island National Monument, protecting old-growth Sitka spruce and western hemlock forests, salmon streams, and the coastal habitat that supports its exceptional wildlife. The village of Angoon on the west coast is the island’s only permanent community and a center of Tlingit culture. Mole Harbor and the Pack Creek area on the eastern side attract visitors by floatplane for bear viewing. A cross-island canoe route connects a series of lakes and portages for experienced paddlers.

Summer offers the most favorable conditions for wildlife viewing and paddling, with bear activity peaking during salmon runs from July through early September. Access is by floatplane or boat from Juneau or Sitka; no roads connect Admiralty Island to the mainland highway system. Visitors should be prepared for genuine wilderness travel: wet weather, rough water, and remote conditions are the norm rather than the exception.

Among Southeast Alaska’s large islands, Admiralty stands out for the degree to which its ecology has remained intact. Its old-growth forests, intact salmon runs, and thriving bear population offer a window into what the broader coastal landscape of the North Pacific once looked like before logging and development altered it elsewhere.

On a gravel bench beside the Steese Highway a few miles north of Fairbanks, a massive gold dredge sits rusting in the tailings piles it spent decades creating — a 250-foot steel machine that floated on its own pond and chewed through the creek gravels of the Goldstream Valley, processing millions of cubic yards of earth in search of placer gold from 1928 until 1959. Gold Dredge 8 is now a National Historic Landmark and a working tourist attraction that offers guided tours of the machine itself alongside gold panning demonstrations in the tailings.

The dredge’s scale is difficult to grasp from a distance; walking through the interior reveals the machinery used to excavate, wash, and sort gravel in a continuous industrial process that ran 24 hours a day during operating season. Guides explain the mechanics of dredge mining and the broader history of placer gold extraction in the Fairbanks area, which produced substantial quantities of gold over several decades. The gold panning activity is hands-on and genuinely productive — the tailings are seeded, and most participants recover some flakes to take home in a small vial.

Gold Dredge 8 operates during the summer tourist season; hours and tour times vary, so checking ahead is advisable. The site is about nine miles from downtown Fairbanks and is a standard stop on many organized tours of the Fairbanks area. Allow two to three hours for the full experience including the dredge tour and panning. The location near the Steese Highway also puts it within range of other historic mining sites in the district.

Within Alaska’s extensive gold rush heritage, Gold Dredge 8 occupies a distinctive position because it represents the industrial phase that followed the initial placer rush — the mechanized extraction that continued long after the individual prospectors had moved on, reshaping entire valley floors in the process.

On the outskirts of Juneau where a commercial boulevard runs between the mountains and the channel, a brewery occupies a large timber-framed building that has become one of the more visited destinations in Alaska’s capital city. The Alaskan Brewing Company was founded in 1986 by a couple who researched a recipe from the gold rush era, and it grew from a small local operation into one of the pioneering craft breweries in the Pacific Northwest — one of the first modern craft breweries in Alaska and among the first in the United States to use a mash filter system that allows brewing with glacial meltwater and locally sourced barley.

The taproom offers the full range of the brewery’s beers on draft, including the flagship Amber Ale that launched the company and seasonal releases that rotate throughout the year. Tours of the production facility run regularly and explain the brewing process as well as the company’s history, including its approach to sustainability: the brewery has long used spent grain to fuel its own boiler system, significantly reducing its energy consumption. The gift shop stocks branded merchandise alongside packaged beer for visitors who want to take bottles or cans home.

The brewery is open daily through the summer tourist season and on a reduced schedule in winter. Tours fill up on busy summer afternoons; arriving early or booking in advance is advisable during cruise ship season, which peaks from June through August. The location is not within easy walking distance of the downtown waterfront, so most visitors drive or take a taxi.

In a city whose economy cycles between government and tourism, the Alaskan Brewing Company has become a genuine point of civic pride — a local business that achieved national recognition while remaining rooted in Juneau and drawing its identity directly from the landscape and history of Southeast Alaska.

In a building designed specifically for the purpose on a downtown Juneau street within sight of the state capitol, Alaska’s primary repository of the state’s art and cultural heritage holds collections that range from Indigenous material culture assembled over more than a century to contemporary Alaska art produced in the present decade. The Alaska State Museum has been collecting and exhibiting the art and artifacts of Alaska since 1900, making it one of the oldest cultural institutions in a state that only achieved statehood in 1959.

The permanent collection’s strongest holdings cover Alaska Native cultures — Tlingit, Haida, Athabascan, Yupik, Inupiaq, and others — with objects including ceremonial regalia, tools, baskets, and carvings that document the breadth and sophistication of the state’s Indigenous artistic traditions. Russian colonial-era objects and natural history specimens extend the collection’s range. The Alaska art galleries feature paintings, prints, and sculptures by artists who have worked in and responded to the Alaskan landscape across more than a century, providing a visual record of how outsiders and residents alike have understood the state’s environment and character.

The museum is open year-round and represents one of the most substantive indoor cultural destinations in Juneau. Summer hours are extended to accommodate the influx of visitors arriving by cruise ship and air. Allow two hours for a thorough visit. The building is a comfortable walk from the waterfront and Franklin Street, and combining it with the capitol building nearby makes for a coherent half-day of cultural exploration.

For a state as large and geographically dispersed as Alaska, having a central repository of this scope in the capital city serves a curatorial function that no regional museum could replicate — a place where the full breadth of Alaskan cultural production is held, studied, and made accessible in one location.

In a hangar-style building beside the Anchorage airport’s general aviation terminal, a collection of vintage aircraft traces the history of a transportation technology that did more to open Alaska than any road or railroad. The Alaska Aviation Museum holds more than two dozen historic aircraft representing the bush planes, military trainers, and commercial airliners that connected Alaska’s remote communities, supplied wartime operations, and made possible the exploration of a landscape where the absence of roads left flying as the only practical option for reaching most of the state’s interior.

Among the collection’s highlights are aircraft types that were workhorses of Alaska’s bush flying era — float-equipped planes capable of landing on lakes and rivers, wheel-ski aircraft designed for snow and gravel, and models associated with the legendary pilots who built Alaska’s aviation culture in the 1930s and 1940s. The museum also preserves artifacts, photographs, and oral history recordings that document the human dimension of Alaska aviation, including the stories of pilots who flew mail, supplies, and passengers to communities that would otherwise have been isolated for months at a time. A flight simulator offers an interactive complement to the static exhibits.

The museum is open year-round, with summer hours extended for the tourist season. Its location near the international airport makes it convenient for visitors with time between flights. Allow two to three hours for a thorough visit. The outdoor aircraft display area is weather-dependent but expands what can be seen significantly when conditions allow.

Aviation is not peripheral to Alaska’s story — it is foundational to how the state functions. The Alaska Aviation Museum makes that argument concretely, with machines rather than abstractions, in a city that remains one of the busiest small-aircraft hubs in the world.

Spruce trees tower over winding paths where fireweed blazes pink in late summer and the Chugach Mountains form a serrated skyline to the east — the Alaska Botanical Garden is Anchorage’s green sanctuary, a place that turns the short northern growing season into something quietly spectacular.

Spread across 110 acres adjacent to Far North Bicentennial Park, the Alaska Botanical Garden features more than 1,100 species of plants, with a strong emphasis on species native to Alaska and the circumpolar north. The herb garden, perennial garden, rock garden, and wildflower meadow each offer distinct character, while the forest trail system winds through mature birch and spruce woodland. The garden’s plant conservation work is taken seriously — it maintains seed banks and propagation programmes for rare Alaskan species. In summer, the garden hosts a weekly farmers market and various evening events that make it a local gathering place as much as a tourist destination.

The garden is at its most colourful from late June through August, when poppies, hardy geraniums, and native wildflowers peak simultaneously. The forest trails are enjoyable into September as birch leaves turn gold. Summer opening hours extend into the evening, and the long daylight makes late afternoon visits particularly pleasant. The site is a short drive east of downtown Anchorage, with free parking available.

In a city that serves primarily as a gateway to Alaska’s wilder places, the Botanical Garden offers something the wilderness cannot: a curated, accessible introduction to the plant communities that define the landscape across the entire state.

On a corner of Fourth Street in downtown Juneau, a building that has housed the Alaska Legislature since 1931 stands as a reminder that the state capital exists in one of the most logistically remote capital cities in the United States — reachable only by air or sea, hemmed against the water by the steep face of Mount Juneau. The Alaska State Capitol Building is a federal building that was repurposed for state government use when Alaska achieved statehood in 1959, a practical arrangement that gives it a different character from state capitols purpose-built for that function.

Free tours of the building are available when the legislature is not in session and provide access to the House and Senate chambers, the governor’s ceremonial office, and exhibits on Alaska’s history as a territory and state. The building’s exterior is relatively understated compared to the domed capitols common in other states, but the interior contains murals, historical photographs, and artifacts that document Alaska’s political development. Legislative sessions run from January through spring, during which the building is a working government facility rather than a tourism destination.

The capitol is most accessible to visitors during summer, when tours run regularly and the downtown is busy with visitors arriving by cruise ship and floatplane. The building is a short walk from the waterfront and the city’s main commercial streets. Allow 45 minutes to an hour for a guided tour. Combined with the nearby Alaska State Museum, it forms a natural pairing for visitors interested in Juneau’s role as a seat of government.

The Alaska State Capitol’s significance lies less in architectural grandeur than in what it represents: the governing center of a state that covers 663,000 square miles but conducts its legislative business in a small, rain-soaked city that most Alaskans can only reach by airplane.

A moose stands placidly behind a wooden fence while ravens call from the spruce trees overhead — the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage offers encounters with the state’s iconic wildlife in settings that feel closer to a boreal wildlife sanctuary than a conventional urban zoo.

Founded in 1969 after a roadside gas station owner acquired a baby Kodiak bear, the zoo has grown into a serious conservation facility focused almost entirely on animals native to Alaska and the circumpolar north. Residents include brown and black bears, Arctic foxes, wolves, lynx, reindeer, Dall sheep, sea otters, and several species of owls and raptors. The grounds cover about 25 acres along the Chugach foothills, and naturalistic enclosures give animals considerable space. The zoo is also home to Ahpun, a well-known polar bear who has lived there since 2002.

The zoo operates year-round, and winter visits are genuinely rewarding — many of the northern species are most active in cold weather, and the grounds are far less crowded than in summer. Summer visits benefit from long daylight hours and peak animal activity at feeding times. Allow two to three hours for a full visit. The zoo sits about a 20-minute drive south of downtown Anchorage on O’Malley Road.

What sets the Alaska Zoo apart from wildlife parks in the contiguous states is its curatorial focus: nearly every animal here is one a traveller might encounter in the wild somewhere in Alaska, making a visit a useful orientation to the fauna of one of the most biologically rich states in the country.

In the Chena River State Recreation Area east of Fairbanks, a trail climbs through boreal forest and subalpine terrain before breaking out onto granite outcrops and tors — towers of rounded rock that rise from the tundra like stacked boulders left by some deliberate arrangement. The Angel Rocks Trail leads to one of the more dramatic geological features accessible by a day hike in the Fairbanks region, where the relatively flat interior landscape makes the appearance of exposed granite formations genuinely surprising.

The trail covers roughly four miles round-trip to the main rock formations, gaining around 900 feet of elevation through a mix of forest floor, open hillside, and finally the rocky terrain around the tors themselves. The granite outcrops offer views across the surrounding boreal landscape and, on clear days, distant mountain ranges. Wildflowers line the trail in early summer, blueberries ripen along the upper sections in late July and August, and the open tundra near the top provides habitat for ptarmigan and ground squirrels. A longer loop option adds mileage and extends the ridge walking.

Midsummer offers the best combination of weather, long daylight hours, and biological activity — late June through July is generally optimal. The trail is hikeable from late May through September in most years, though early season can bring mud and late season brings the possibility of early snowfall at higher elevations. Starting early in the day helps avoid afternoon thunderstorms, which are common inland during summer. The trailhead is accessible by car about 49 miles east of Fairbanks on the Chena Hot Springs Road.

For visitors spending time in Fairbanks who want a genuine backcountry experience without a floatplane or guided expedition, Angel Rocks offers one of the most rewarding day hikes in the Interior — terrain that feels remote and geologically distinctive within easy reach of the city.

In the Alexander Archipelago of Southeast Alaska, a large island lies between the open Pacific to the west and the Inside Passage to the east, its interior covered by old-growth temperate rainforest and its coastline indented by bays and inlets where fishing boats and commercial vessels have moved for well over a century. Chichagof Island covers more than 2,000 square miles and supports one of the highest densities of brown bears in Alaska, a population that thrives in the island’s salmon streams and berry-rich forest margins without the complication of road access or significant permanent settlement.

The towns of Hoonah and Pelican are the island’s primary communities. Hoonah, on the island’s eastern shore, is a predominantly Tlingit community and the largest settlement, with a small boat harbor and connections to Juneau by ferry and air. Pelican, on the northwest coast, is a tiny fishing community accessible primarily by small plane or ferry, oriented almost entirely around the commercial halibut and salmon fisheries that have sustained it for decades. The surrounding Tongass National Forest covers most of the island’s land area, making the forests and waterways effectively public land for hunting, fishing, and wilderness recreation.

Hoonah is accessible by Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Juneau and sees some cruise ship traffic. Pelican receives ferry service less frequently; visiting requires either ferry scheduling flexibility or charter flight. Summer is the practical season for most visits; wildlife activity and fishing are at their peak from June through September. Kayaking the island’s sheltered bays and inlets offers some of the finest sea kayaking terrain in Southeast Alaska.

Chichagof Island exemplifies the character of the outer archipelago: large, wet, forested, and defined more by its relationship to the sea and the Tlingit culture that has inhabited it for millennia than by any development imposed from outside.

A wooden sluice channels glacial meltwater through a narrow valley while rusted equipment from the gold rush era sits half-buried in the gravel, and somewhere underfoot, fine particles of real gold still settle in the riffles — Crow Creek Mine is one of the last working placer gold mines in southcentral Alaska open to the public.

Located in Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage in the Chugach Mountains, Crow Creek Mine has operated continuously since 1896 and retains much of its original infrastructure. Eight historic buildings from the mining era remain on-site, including a bunkhouse, assay office, and equipment sheds, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors can pan for gold in the creek using equipment provided on-site, and the mine’s operators guarantee that gold is present — because they seed the panning area with concentrates. Beyond panning, the property offers a self-guided walk through the historic structures and along the creek corridor.

The mine is open from mid-May through mid-September, with the warmest and driest conditions in July and August. Morning visits avoid the midday tour bus crowds that arrive from Anchorage. Allow two to three hours if you intend to pan seriously; casual visitors can see the historic structures in under an hour. Girdwood is also home to a major ski resort and makes a logical stop en route to Seward or the Kenai Peninsula.

Within Alaska’s gold rush landscape, Crow Creek stands out for its authenticity — this is not a reconstructed theme park but a genuine operation with unbroken ties to the original 1896 stampede that preceded the better-known Klondike rush.

A short drive north of Juneau along the road that ends at the edge of the wilderness, a broad beach of coarse sand and gravel stretches along the shore of Lynn Canal where the forest meets saltwater and bald eagles perch in the Sitka spruce along the treeline. Eagle Beach is one of the few places in the Juneau road system where the coastal landscape opens up enough to see both the water and the surrounding mountains without the dense rainforest closing in on all sides, giving it a spacious quality unusual in Southeast Alaska.

The beach and adjacent state recreation area attract locals and visitors for walking, wildlife watching, and simply sitting with a view of the canal and the mountains of the Chilkat Range across the water. Harbor seals haul out on rocks near the shore, and the tidal flats at low tide are active with shorebirds during migration. In late summer, spawning salmon in the nearby stream draw bears and eagles to the area; sightings are possible but not guaranteed. The beach itself is pleasant for walking at any tide, with good views in both directions along the canal.

Eagle Beach is accessible year-round by road — about 28 miles from downtown Juneau — and is popular with local residents for weekend walks regardless of season. Summer and early fall offer the best combination of wildlife activity and accessible weather. The area is best visited at low or mid-tide for walking; high tide reduces the usable beach significantly. No developed facilities beyond a parking area and basic amenities are present.

Within the limited road system that Juneau possesses, Eagle Beach holds an important role as the point where the pavement effectively ends and the character of Southeast Alaska’s coastal wilderness becomes immediately apparent — a transition from city to landscape that happens with remarkable abruptness.

Rows of gleaming automobiles stretch the length of a vast climate-controlled gallery, each one a time capsule from a different decade of the 20th century — a 1918 Detroit Electric sharing space with a 1940s Soviet-era ZIS limousine and a collection of American muscle cars that never rusted in the dry Interior Alaska air.

The Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks houses one of the most significant collections of vintage automobiles in the United States, with over 85 vehicles spanning the years 1898 to 1970. What distinguishes it from many automotive museums is the deliberate pairing of each car with period-accurate fashions: mannequins dressed in historically researched clothing from the same year as the vehicle stand beside them, making the collection feel more like a social history than a mechanical inventory. Highlights include rare early steam-powered vehicles, Alaskan-themed automobiles that made pioneering overland journeys, and several cars that exist in no other collection in the world.

The museum is open year-round but draws the largest crowds during summer, when Fairbanks serves as a hub for visitors exploring Denali and the Arctic. A visit typically takes one to two hours. The building itself sits within the Wedgewood Resort complex, making it easy to combine with a stay in the area.

In a city better known for gold rush history and aurora tourism, Fountainhead offers something unexpected: a meticulous, beautifully presented record of how Americans moved through their century, preserved with a care that is rare even in the Lower 48.

In the long Alaskan summer, when the sun barely sets and the air carries the faint sweetness of boreal wildflowers, the Georgeson Botanical Garden becomes a destination in its own right — a working research garden where peonies and poppies flourish at latitudes most gardeners consider inhospitable.

Established in 1919 as part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks agricultural experiment station, the Georgeson Botanical Garden is the northernmost public botanical garden in the United States. The garden’s mission is both horticultural research and public education, and it shows: plots are clearly labeled, and trial varieties of vegetables, herbs, and ornamental plants grow alongside permanent perennial borders. The famous giant vegetables — cabbages and zucchini that reach record sizes in Fairbanks’s continuous summer daylight — are a perennial draw. The peony collection is one of the finest in Alaska, and the garden also maintains a wildflower meadow and a children’s discovery garden.

The garden is open during summer only, typically late May through early September, when daylight stretches past midnight and plant growth accelerates dramatically. Wednesday evening tours and special programming take place throughout the season. A visit of one to two hours covers the grounds comfortably. Admission fees are modest, and the garden is a short walk from the main university campus.

For travellers passing through Fairbanks, Georgeson offers a counterpoint to the region’s gold rush and wilderness narratives — proof that human ingenuity and 21 hours of daylight can turn subarctic soil into something genuinely lush.

Upturned tree stumps tower overhead like living sculptures, their roots splayed wide against a backdrop of temperate rainforest and the distant glimmer of Gastineau Channel. Glacier Gardens in Juneau transforms what a 1984 landslide left behind into something quietly remarkable — a place where catastrophe became the seed of deliberate beauty.

The signature feature here is the waterfall garden, where inverted spruce and hemlock stumps serve as massive planters overflowing with fuchsias, begonias, and hanging baskets. Guided tours aboard covered carts wind through the property and climb to a viewpoint above the tree line, where on clear days the panorama takes in Juneau, Douglas Island, and the surrounding Tongass National Forest. The 50-acre site also includes a pond, a gift shop, and a greenhouse operation that supplies the plantings throughout the growing season.

Summer is the ideal window — roughly late May through September — when the hanging baskets are in full bloom and the rainforest is lush and green. Morning visits tend to offer better light and smaller crowds before cruise ship passengers arrive. Allow at least an hour and a half for the full tour, and dress in layers; Juneau’s weather can shift quickly even in July.

Within Southeast Alaska’s slim list of botanical attractions, Glacier Gardens holds a distinctive position: it is neither a wilderness trail nor a formal museum, but a place that blurs the boundary between horticulture and landscape art. For visitors moving through Juneau between glacier excursions and whale watches, it offers a slower, more intimate encounter with the region’s extraordinary plant life.

On a property outside the town of Wasilla in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, a kennel maintained by a veteran of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race offers visitors direct contact with the dogs and equipment of Alaska’s most iconic sporting tradition. Happy Trails Kennels has been a working sled dog operation for decades, raising and training huskies for long-distance racing in a sport where the relationship between musher and dog team is built over years of shared work on the trail.

Tours of the kennel introduce visitors to the dogs — a mix of Alaskan huskies bred for endurance, speed, and cold-weather performance — and explain the training regimens, nutrition, veterinary care, and logistics involved in preparing a team for a race like the Iditarod, which covers more than a thousand miles of wilderness trail from Anchorage to Nome. Visitors can meet puppies, handle adult dogs, and in some seasons ride in a cart or sled pulled by a small team. The human element of the sport is explained alongside the canine: mushers are athletes who spend months preparing for races that unfold over more than a week of continuous travel.

Tours are available year-round, with summer visits focused on kennel education and dog interaction and winter visits offering the possibility of sled rides on snow. The Wasilla location is about an hour north of Anchorage by road and is accessible by car. Booking ahead is advisable as tour availability depends on the kennel’s training schedule and seasonal commitments.

In a state where sled dog mushing is the official sport and the Iditarod is a genuine cultural institution rather than merely a spectator event, a working racing kennel offers a level of access to that culture that no museum exhibit or race-day observation can fully replicate.

On the ground floor of a downtown building a short walk from the Juneau waterfront, a municipal museum holds a collection that traces the history of a city whose identity has been shaped in roughly equal parts by Tlingit culture, gold mining, fishing, and the peculiar pressures of being the capital of a state with no road connecting it to the rest of the country. The Juneau-Douglas City Museum occupies a modest space that punches above its size in the depth and specificity of what it documents.

Exhibits cover the Tlingit people who inhabited the area long before the city existed, the gold rush that established Juneau as a boomtown in the 1880s, and the commercial fishing and cannery industries that followed. Artifacts, photographs, maps, and oral history recordings give the collection a local texture that larger institutions often sacrifice for broader narratives. A scale model of the city helps orient visitors to Juneau’s geography — a city hemmed in by mountains and water in ways that continue to shape daily life. Rotating exhibitions explore specific aspects of local history in more depth.

The museum is centrally located and manageable in size, making it a sensible first stop for visitors who want context before exploring the city and surrounding landscape. Allow one to two hours for a thorough visit. It is open year-round, though hours may be reduced in winter. Admission is modest and the staff are typically knowledgeable about local history and willing to answer specific questions.

Among Alaska’s municipal history museums, Juneau-Douglas holds a particular value for the specificity of its focus — a place where the story told is precisely and unapologetically the story of one city and the communities that built it, rather than a summary of the state as a whole.