Known simply as the Northwest Alaska Areas, three units of the National Park System stretch eastward from the Chukchi Sea for some 290 miles to the upper Noatak River. Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park, and Noatak National Preserve together protect some 9 1/4 million acres of subarctic and arctic wildlands. They also offer, on the Noatak and Kobuk Rivers, some of North America's finest waters for wilderness expeditions. West to east, these parklands encompass the Brooks Range, northernmost extension of the Rocky Mountain Range, north of the Arctic Circle. They trace the treeline or northern limit of tree growth as the boreal forest gives way to the tundra that stretches northward to Point Barrow on the Beaufort Sea.

The Northwest Alaska Areas protect the archeologically significant beach ridges of Cape Krusenstern, the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, and most of the expansive watershed of the Noatak River. With Gates of the Arctic National Park they extend 360 miles inland and encompass 16.8 million acres. Linked to this expansive topography is the wide-ranging, nomadic western arctic herd of barren ground caribou. Its aggregate numbers exceed 400,000 animals today. The tundra offers a thin veneer of life across which caribou must move to forage for adequate food. In summer the land is covered with a profusion of low-growing plants, including dwarfed ground willows, saxifrage, lupines, reindeer moss, and lichens. The caribou has a strong presence in native stories of this region. Native peoples here were often semi-nomadic, following the caribou migrations. Even the coastal peoples of Cape Krusenstern ranged inland to hunt caribou and to hunt and trap other land mammals when the sea mammals, so important to their lives, were scarce.

Throughout these parklands, local residents still pursue caribou hunting, fishing, trapping, and other subsistence activities. Special provisions of the legislation establishing these Alaska parklands allow local people to continue these activities. Many residents rely significantly on locally harvested animals, fish, and plants for satisfying basic food needs. The Inupiat people traditionally valued the land so that, through wise use over thousands of years, its resources and productivity were carefully preserved for the benefit of future generations. The National Park Service has a compatible mission — of stewardship of this vast reach of northwest Alaska for the use and enjoyment of this and coming generations. From the visitor center in Kotzebue it is difficult to imagine the extent of the Noatak River — whose name means "passage to the interior" — or the expanse of the annual caribou migrations throughout the immense area that these parks encompass.