Chenega is a census-designated place (CDP) on Evans Island in the Chugach Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. Located in Prince William Sound, the CDP consists of the Chugach Alutiiq village of Chenega Bay, which was established only after the Good Friday earthquake destroyed the original community on Chenega Island to the north. As of the 2010 census, the population of the CDP was 76, largely Alaska Natives. As of 2021, the population of Chenega is 49. Chenega Bay is in the Chugach School District and has one school, Chenega Bay Community School, serving approximately 16 students from preschool through high school.
Cordova is a city in Chugach Census Area, Alaska, United States. It lies near the mouth of the Copper River, at the head of Orca Inlet on the east side of Prince William Sound. The population was 2,609 at the 2020 census, up from 2,239 in 2010.
Whittier is a city at the head of the Passage Canal in the U.S. state of Alaska, about 58 miles (93 km) southeast of Anchorage. The city is within the Chugach Census Area, one of the two entities established in 2019 when the former Valdez–Cordova Census Area was dissolved. At the 2020 census the population was 272, up from 220 in 2010, almost all of whom live in a single building, the Begich Towers. Whittier is also a port for the Alaska Marine Highway.
Prince William Sound is a sound of the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Other settlements on the sound, which contains numerous small islands, include Cordova and Whittier plus the Alaska native villages of Chenega and Tatitlek.
The Gulf of Alaska is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, where Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage are found.
The Alaska Marine Highway (AMH) or the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) is a ferry service operated by the U.S. state of Alaska. It has its headquarters in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Evans Island is an island in the Prince William Sound of southern Alaska. It lies just east of Bainbridge Island across the Prince of Wales Passage. Elrington Island lies to its south, Latouche Island to its southeast, and Knight Island to its northeast. Although Evans Island had been inhabited up to the time of the Russian exploration of Alaska, the island had no modern-day inhabitants until 1984, when a group of residents and former residents of the original Alutiq village of Chenega, on Chenega Island, decided to build the village of Chenega Bay on Crab Bay on Evans Island. Old Chenega had been destroyed and one-third of its residents had been killed by the tsunami from the 1964 Alaska earthquake. The new community of Chenega is coextensive with Evans Island, which has a land area of 74.605 km2 and a population of 86 persons as of the 2000 census.
College Fjord is a fjord located in the northern sector of Prince William Sound in the U.S. state of Alaska. The fjord contains five tidewater glaciers, five large valley glaciers, and dozens of smaller glaciers, most named after renowned East Coast colleges. College Fjord was discovered in 1899 during the Harriman Expedition, at which time the glaciers were named. The expedition included a Harvard and an Amherst professor, and they named many of the glaciers after elite colleges. According to Bruce Molina, author of Alaska's Glaciers, "They took great delight in ignoring Princeton."
MV Aurora is a feeder vessel for the Alaska Marine Highway System, built in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin in 1977 by Peterson Shipbuilders and commissioned by the Alaska Marine Highway System the same year.
M/V Chenega is a catamaran ferry built by Derecktor Shipyards in Bridgeport, Connecticut for the Alaska Marine Highway System entering service 2005. After being laid up in 2017, in March 2021 it was sold by the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities to Servicios y Concesiones Maritimas Ibicencas along with sister ship MV Fairweather for service between Spain and Ibiza.
MV Fairweather is a catamaran ferry built by Derecktor Shipyards in Bridgeport, Connecticut for the Alaska Marine Highway System entering service 2004. After being laid up since 2019, in March 2021 it was sold to Servicios y Concesiones Maritimas Ibicencas for service between Spain and Ibiza.
Chenega Island is an island in Prince William Sound in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the traditional home to the community of Chenega, though much of its population eventually migrated to Chenega Bay on nearby Evans Island after the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and accompanying tsunami. Chenega Island and its surrounding habitat were also heavily impacted by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The island has a land area of 57.084 km2 and, after the mass emigration, was unpopulated as of the 2000 census.
The Sargent Icefield is a large icefield located on the eastern portion of the Kenai Peninsula bordering Prince William Sound in Alaska. The ice field has numerous outflow glaciers including the Chenega, Princeton, and Ellsworth Glaciers.
Knight Island is an island in western Prince William Sound of the Gulf of Alaska in the U.S. state of Alaska.
Nassau Fjord or Nassau Fiord is a four mile long inlet in Alaska branching off from Prince William Sound. Nassau Fjord is glacially carved and also home to the famous tidewater Chenega Glacier which shares a two mile long calving face with the Fjord. The Princeton and Tigertail Glaciers both come terminate within one mile of the fjord's waters as well.
The Harvard Glacier is a large tidewater glacier in the Alaska's Prince William Sound. The glacier has a 1.5-mile (2 km) wide face where it calves into the College Fjord. It is 300 ft thick and covers 120,000 acres of Chugach National Forest. The Harvard Glacier is the second largest glacier in the Prince William Sound, after the Columbia Glacier. It is a popular destination of cruise ships in the Prince William Sound.
The Chugach School District is a school district headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska. It operates three brick-and-mortar schools in Prince William Sound, Alaska; a homeschool program that serves students across the state; and a short-term residential school out of Anchorage.
Chenega Bay Airport is a state-owned public-use airport located one nautical mile (1.85 km) northeast of the central business district of Chenega, in the Valdez-Cordova Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska.
