Katmai National Park and Preserve is a
United States National Park and
Preserve in southern
Alaska, notable for the
Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its
Alaskan brown bears. The park and preserve covers , being roughly
the size of Wales. Most of this is a designated
wilderness area in the national park where all hunting is banned, including over of land. The park is named after
Mount Katmai, its centerpiece
stratovolcano. The park is located on the
Alaska Peninsula, across from
Kodiak Island, with headquarters in nearby
King Salmon, about southwest of
Anchorage. The area was first designated a
national monument in 1918 to protect the area around the major 1912
volcanic eruption of
Novarupta, which formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a ,
pyroclastic flow. The park includes as many as 18 individual volcanoes, seven of which have been active since 1900.