Resolution Park is on a small but prominent point overlooking Cook Inlet. A bronze statue of Captain James Cook stands on a large wooden deck, but he is gazing out to sea - the opposite of the way he was facing when he explored Cook Inlet in 1778 aboard the HMS Resolution. Cook didn't personally come this far up the inlet, instead sending a boat with his ship's master, William Bligh, later to become Captain Bligh who inspired mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty.
Cook's goal on his third voyage was to discover a north-west passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and failing to find it here, he considered his two weeks in the inlet that bears his name a waste of time, never envisioning that one day Alaska's largest city would rise on this shore. He wrote of the incident in his journal: "Nothing but a trifling point in geography has been determined."
After surveying the coast of northwestern America and Alaska, Cook sailed south from the Bering Strait to the Sandwich Islands, where on the island of Hawaii he met his death on Feb. 14, 1779.The cantilevered platform of Resolution Park offers splendid views and several interesting and informative signs which tell the human and natural history of the area. There is very limited street parking near the park.
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