Russell Island

Russell Island has hosted scientific research for over 100 years.

NPS Photo

New Land

When John Muir visited Glacier Bay in 1879 and 1880, what would become known as Russell Island was just a rocky hummock emerging from the face of the retreating glacier. Today it is an island covered with vegetation, named in 1937 for explorer Israel Cook Russell, who explored in the Yakutat region in the early 1890s. Traveling through the narrow channel between the island and the mainland be on the lookout for wildlife on the broad, open alluvial fan of the eastern shore. During the Little Ice Age, Russell Island was under thousands of feet of ice. The weight of all that ice pressed the earth’s crust into the mantle. Today, relieved of that weight, the landscape is rising due to a phenomenon known as “isostatic rebound.” According to scientists, the landscape of upper Glacier Bay is rising around 32 mm/1.26 inches annually—the fastest isostatic uplift in the world.