Anchorage Borough, Alaska

Anchorage is a unified home-rule municipality in Alaska, United States, on the upper end of Cook Inlet roughly 350 miles south of Fairbanks by road. It had a population of 291,247 at the 2020 census, an estimated 287,155 by 2025, and covers 1,706.88 square miles (4,420.81 km2) of land centred near 61°13′00″N 149°53′37″W.

Anchorage is the borough seat and the only incorporated city; its postal code is 99501. The borough holds one consolidated city, two census-designated places, a scatter of unincorporated communities, and a joint military base, and it runs on Alaska Time (UTC−9 standard, UTC−8 daylight). Its FIPS code is 02020.

Towns & Villages in Anchorage

Anchorage is a consolidated city-borough — the City of Anchorage and the Greater Anchorage Area Borough merged into one government in 1975, so there is no separate incorporated town anywhere inside its 1,706.88 square miles. Below are the borough’s recognized communities: the urban core, two Census Bureau CDPs, several unincorporated hamlets along Turnagain Arm and the Glenn Highway, and Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson (JBER).

The Census Bureau does not publish a population for “Anchorage” separate from the municipality total, because the city and the borough are the same legal entity; only Eagle River and Girdwood are broken out as their own census-designated places. Chugiak and Eklutna were counted as distinct places before the 1975 merger and are now folded into the borough total along with everything else outside Eagle River and Girdwood. Portage is a ghost town, not a functioning settlement — the 1964 earthquake dropped the ground about six feet and put most of the original townsite below high tide; only building ruins and a stand of dead “ghost forest” spruce remain, and today the name marks a highway junction and glacier-tour access point rather than a place with residents.

ZIP Codes

• 99501–99518 — downtown, Midtown, South Anchorage and the Hillside (the urban core uses more than a dozen ZIPs split by neighborhood)
• 99577 — Eagle River
• 99567 — Chugiak (also serves Birchwood, Peters Creek and Eklutna)
• 99587 — Girdwood
• 99505 — JBER (Elmendorf side)
• 99506 — JBER (Richardson side)

Bird Creek, Indian and Portage have no ZIP code of their own; mail there routes through the Girdwood or Indian-area post offices along the Seward Highway rather than a dedicated code for the hamlet itself.

Geography

Anchorage sits at the head of Cook Inlet where Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm meet, backed by the Chugach Mountains to the east and fronted by mudflats and tidal water to the west. The Chugach range covers most of the borough’s eastern two-thirds inside Chugach State Park, leaving under a tenth of the land area actually built up; Eklutna Lake and the Eklutna River, in the borough’s northeast corner, are the largest glacial lake and the main hydroelectric source for the area. Turnagain Arm, the tidal inlet along the borough’s southern edge, has one of the largest tidal ranges in North America and produces a tidal bore visible from the Seward Highway.

Anchorage borders Matanuska-Susitna Borough to the north, Kenai Peninsula Borough to the south across Turnagain Arm, and the Chugach Census Area to the east.

Demographics

Anchorage had 291,247 residents at the 2020 census, an estimated 287,155 by 2025, and a median household income of $103,284 in 2024 — above the statewide figure. Girdwood, the borough’s second-largest named place after the urban core, had 2,025 residents in 2020; Eagle River is the largest community outside the urban core by most local estimates, though its own 2020 CDP total is not separately confirmed here. Population density across the full 1,706.88 square miles works out to roughly 170 people per square mile, but that figure is misleading: nearly all residents live on the 10% of land that isn’t mountain, glacier or park.

Economy & Local Life

Health care and social assistance is the borough’s largest employment sector at 24,443 workers, followed by public administration at 15,413 and retail trade at 13,937. Government — municipal, state, federal and military — and transportation are the other pillars: Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, 5 miles southwest of downtown, is the busiest cargo airport in the United States and the world’s third-busiest by cargo volume, anchored by FedEx and UPS trans-Pacific hub operations. JBER, the merged Air Force and Army base on the city’s north side, is one of the borough’s largest single employers and headquarters for Alaskan Command and the 11th Airborne Division. Girdwood’s economy runs on Alyeska Resort, the state’s largest ski area, which draws winter visitors and hosts the Girdwood Forest Fair every July, one of Southcentral Alaska’s biggest annual community gatherings.

History

Anchorage takes its name from the ship anchorage at the mouth of Ship Creek, first used by Captain James Cook’s expedition in 1778 and again by federal railroad surveyors in 1914–15, when Ship Creek became the construction camp for the Alaska Railroad. The city incorporated in 1920. In September 1975, the City of Anchorage merged with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough to form the unified Municipality of Anchorage, absorbing what had been the separate communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Eklutna, Girdwood and Portage into one government. Eklutna’s Dena’ina Athabascan village, near the borough’s northeast corner, has been inhabited more than 800 years and predates every other settlement on this list; its cemetery, with brightly painted Russian Orthodox spirit houses, is one of the most photographed sites in the state. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, the second-largest ever recorded, dropped Portage’s townsite below the tideline and reshaped Turnagain Arm’s shoreline; Girdwood’s original townsite, also damaged, was rebuilt farther up its valley.

Getting There

The Glenn Highway connects Anchorage to Eagle River, Chugiak and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to the north; the Seward Highway runs south along Turnagain Arm through Indian, Bird Creek, Girdwood and Portage toward the Kenai Peninsula; the Parks Highway splits off from the Glenn Highway to reach the Alaska interior. No interstate crosses the borough — Alaska’s National Highway System routes carry that traffic instead.

• Eagle River — 13 miles northeast of downtown
• Girdwood — 37 miles southeast of downtown
• Wasilla (Matanuska-Susitna Borough) — 43 miles north
• Seward (Kenai Peninsula Borough) — 125 miles south

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, 5 miles southwest of downtown, is the nearest commercial airport and Alaska’s main air gateway. The Alaska Railroad runs passenger service from its downtown Anchorage depot north to Fairbanks and south to Seward and Whittier, with a seasonal flag stop at Girdwood.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Anchorage?
Anchorage is a unified municipality in Southcentral Alaska, at the head of Cook Inlet, bordered by Matanuska-Susitna Borough to the north, Kenai Peninsula Borough to the south and the Chugach Census Area to the east.

What is the population of Anchorage?
Anchorage had a population of 291,247 at the 2020 census, an estimated 287,155 by 2025.

How big is Anchorage?
Anchorage covers 1,706.88 square miles (4,420.81 km2) of land, plus another 239.80 square miles of water, making it the fourth-largest city by land area in the United States.

What is the county seat of Anchorage?
Anchorage has no separate county seat because the city and the borough are the same government; the urban core functions as the seat, and its postal code is 99501.

How many towns are in Anchorage?
There are no separately incorporated towns inside the municipality. The recognized communities are the urban core, the Eagle River and Girdwood CDPs, the unincorporated communities of Chugiak, Eklutna, Bird Creek, Indian and Portage, and Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson.

What ZIP codes does Anchorage use?
The urban core spans more than a dozen ZIPs from 99501 to 99518; Eagle River is 99577, Chugiak and Eklutna are 99567, Girdwood is 99587, and JBER splits between 99505 and 99506.

Why does Anchorage have no townships?
Alaska boroughs, unlike counties in most of the Lower 48, were never subdivided into civil townships; land outside incorporated cities is administered directly by the borough government.

Is Girdwood part of Anchorage?
Yes. Girdwood incorporated as its own city in 1961 but joined the Municipality of Anchorage in the 1975 merger and is now a CDP and neighborhood rather than an independent municipality.

More counties in this state: Towns and villages in Alaska.