Where is Denali?
Getting to Denali
IF I had driven to Denali from Chicago, it would have taken ~60 hours (longer than driving cross-country from NYC to LA). I considered it, but I also would've had to acquire a vehicle which sounded expensive and like a bit of a hassle.
Instead, I flew from Chicago to Fairbanks (~6.5hrs) and then got a car ride down to Denali (~2.5hrs)
Image Source: Google Maps
Where is Denali?
Denali National Park and Preserve is in the interior of Alaska, about a 4 hour drive from Anchorage on the coast.
High-resolution permafrost modeling in Denali National Park and Preserve - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Location-of-Denali-National-Park-and-Preserve-DENA-in-Alaska_fig1_280311351 [accessed 10 May 2026]
How big is Denali?
Denali National Park and Preserve combines 4.7 million acres of park with 1.3 million acres of preserve for approximately 6 million acres (9492 square miles) of NPS-managed land.
For comparison, that's roughly the size of the state of New Hampshire! NPS Denali Statistics
Note: A National Park generally has stricter regulation around activities like hunting and resource extraction than a National Preserve does.
Alaska Public Lands
An additional interesting note on Alaska as a whole is that the vast majority (~89%) of land is publicly owned. For reference, the next highest percentages of public lands are from states like Nevada and Utah (NCSL Public Land Ownership)
Image Source: NPS Regions of Alaska
Nearly 90 percent of the land in Alaska is publicly owned, including both federal and state land ownership. Approximately 65 percent of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. Federal government as public lands, including national forests, national parks, and national wildlife refuges. The State of Alaska owns 24.5 percent of the land. Ten percent of the land in Alaska is owned by 12 regional Native corporations and dozens of local Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). Less than 1% of the land is owned privately. (State of Alaska 2023).
Source: Alaska SHMP