United States · Alaska · Anchorage
Government Hill, Anchorage — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Government Hill is Anchorage's oldest neighbourhood, a bluff of railroad cottages north of downtown across Ship Creek.
About Government Hill
Where to stay in Government Hill
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Government Hill sits apart. Most visitors bed down in downtown Anchorage and walk up the bluff to see the neighbourhood, which suits travellers who want quiet residential streets near the rail yards rather than a room on the hill itself. Two anchors orient a stay.
The Alaska Engineering Commission Cottage No. 23 and the Civil Works Residential Dwellings both survive from the railroad camp that founded the district.
About Government Hill
What are the main landmarks in Government Hill?
The hill keeps its railroad-camp bones. Its listed buildings include the Alaska Engineering Commission Cottage No. 23 and the Alaska Engineering Commission Cottage No. 25, twin frame houses raised for the crews who laid the Alaska Railroad, alongside the Civil Works Residential Dwellings from a later relief programme. Down the bluff and across Ship Creek, wider Anchorage adds the Anchorage Museum, the Oscar Anderson House Museum, All Saints Episcopal Church, the Leopold David House, and the Oscar Gill House.
What is the history of Government Hill?
The railroad made this hill. When the Alaska Engineering Commission laid out its construction town in 1915, workers pitched the first tents on the bluff above Ship Creek, and Government Hill grew as Anchorage's earliest platted neighbourhood. The Alaska Engineering Commission Cottage No. 23 and Cottage No. 25 date from that survey era, while the Civil Works Residential Dwellings arrived with a 1930s federal works programme.
It was born of the rail yards below.
Where is Government Hill?
Government Hill rises on a bluff north of downtown Anchorage, cut off from the centre by the Ship Creek valley and its rail yards below.
Good for
More areas in Anchorage
Updated July 2026