Zipper Creek (Alaska)

Last updated
Zipper Creek
Country United States
Physical characteristics
Main source Brassiere Hills, Juneau, Alaska
River mouth Taku Inlet
259 ft (79 m)

Zipper Creek is a river in the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska, United States. Located 19 miles (31 km) northeast of the city of Juneau, its origin is in the Brassiere Hills. It flows southward past Taku Glacier and ends at the head of Taku Inlet.

Juneau, Alaska State capital city and borough in Alaska, United States

The City and Borough of Juneau, commonly known as Juneau, is the capital city of Alaska. It is a unified municipality on Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle, and it is the second largest city in the United States by area. Juneau has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of what was the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900. The municipality unified on July 1, 1970, when the city of Juneau merged with the city of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current municipality, which is larger by area than both Rhode Island and Delaware.

Alaska State of the United States of America

Alaska is a U.S. state in the northwest extremity of North America, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. The Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon border the state to the east, its most extreme western part is Attu Island, and it has a maritime border with Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas—southern parts of the Arctic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. It is the largest state in the United States by area and the seventh largest subnational division in the world. In addition, it is the 3rd least populous and the most sparsely populated of the 50 United States; nevertheless, it is by far the most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel in North America: its population—estimated at 738,432 by the United States Census Bureau in 2015— is more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, and oil industries, resources which it has in abundance. Military bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy.

The Brassiere Hills are a pair of summits in the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska, United States. It is located at the northern end of Taku Inlet, 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north of Taku Point and 18 miles (29 km) northeast of the city of Juneau. The peaks are 2,405 feet (733 m) and 2,360 feet (719 m) high and a stream named Zipper Creek runs between them.

The stream's name was reported by David A. Brew and Arthur B. Ford of the United States Geological Survey in 1965; it was entered into the Geographic Names Information System on March 31, 1981. [1] Nancy Bartley of The Seattle Times attributes the naming to photographer Austin Post. [2]

United States Geological Survey scientific agency of the United States government

The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility.

Geographic Names Information System geographical database

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database that contains name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features located throughout the United States of America and its territories. It is a type of gazetteer. GNIS was developed by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote the standardization of feature names.

<i>The Seattle Times</i> newspaper

The Seattle Times is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region.

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Nugget Creek is fed by the Nugget Glacier, a tributary glacier on the mountainside east of Auke Bay in the borough of Juneau, Alaska, US. The creek feeds Nugget Falls. The valley of Nugget Creek joins that of Mendenhall River about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) above the foot of the glacier. Its basin, about 3 miles (4.8 km) in length, trends east and west, and there are several tributary gulches which head against the Lemon Creek divide. The rocks of the valley belong to the group of schists which lies next to the main diorite, except at the headwaters, where the edge of the intrusive rock appears. The Nugget Mall, located at the opposite end of the Mendenhall Valley and Juneau's largest shopping mall, derives its name from the creek.

References

  1. USGS GNIS Feature Detail Report: Zipper Creek. Accessed July 28, 2010.
  2. Bartley, Nancy (July 21, 2004). "Vashon Island scientist's lifelong love affair with glaciers". The Seattle Times. The Seattle Times Company. Retrieved July 28, 2010.

Coordinates: 58°26′57″N134°01′05″W / 58.44917°N 134.01806°W / 58.44917; -134.01806

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.