Winter tourism on the rise in Alaska: take a pie-making class, book a tour of Dallas Seavey's kennel, learn to photograph the Northern Lights.

• Author: Resz, Heather A.
• Position: VISITOR INDUSTRY

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It's an exceedingly pleasant Saturday breakfast, sipping coffee and watching an ever-changing canvas of snow-covered trees, lakes, trails, and homes--and several moose--scroll past the windows of the dining car on the Alaska Railroad's Aurora Train.

I smile at the sight of a man who stopped to wave hello to the train while out walking his dog.

As the train sways north carrying me to Talkeetna, my mind wanders back to a time when Wasilla, Willow, and Talkeetna were small villages that grew up along the Railbelt.

The road, and with it the modern world, reached Wasilla and Willow sooner. But for half a century, steamships and the railroad were the primary transportation links between Talkeetna and the rest of the world.

I remember my friend Pat Pratt's stories about riding the train to get to her university before the Talkeetna Spur Road was punched through. I remember sharing a meal with Dean Bunker, the man behind the wheel of the first school bus when it rolled in to Talkeetna in 1964.

Today, a century after the Alaska Railroad chose the location near the confluence of the Susitna, Chulitna, and Talkeetna rivers for its district headquarters, thousands of visitors arrive each year by train and passenger bus to stroll Talkeetna's streets, shop at its quaint stores, eat at its cafes and pubs, and book lodging, flightseeing, and day trips.

Alaska's visitor industry created forty-six thousand jobs statewide during peak season and generated $3.9 billion in economic impact in 2013-14, according to state numbers.

A Winter State Where Summer Travel Rules

Although Alaska is the biggest and most "wintery" of all the winter states, most of the nearly 2 million people who travel here annually--1.66 million of the 1.93 million visitors in 2013-14--travel between mid-May and mid-September, according to the state report "Economic Impact of Alaska's Visitor Industry" released in February 2015.

Only 273,000 travelers visited during the winter season in 2014.

Winter tourism in Alaska may be on the cusp of change, says Visit Anchorage's David Kasser, vice president of Tourism Development and Sales.

The probable catalyst is the Go West Summit, which brought about 350 international operators to Anchorage February 22 to 25 and offers tourism-related products or services in the American West.

Although most of the companies that participated sell summer travel exclusively, Go West introduced people to winter tourism in Alaska through Adventure Day, which included a range of excursions from photo safaris to spa days to ice fishing, as well as flights to Winterlake Lodge to experience mushing or taking a...