Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve lies to the west of the Dalton Highway, centered on the Brooks Range and covering the north and south slopes of the mountains.

The majority of Gates of the Arctic is designated as national park, in which only subsistence hunting by local rural residents is permitted.

They are Alatna, Allakaket, Ambler, Anaktuvuk Pass, Bettles, Evansville, Hughes, Kobuk, Nuiqsut, Shungnak, and Wiseman.

[9] The Arctic Interagency Visitor Center in nearby Coldfoot is open from late May to early September, providing information on the parks, preserves and refuges of the Brooks Range, Yukon Valley and the North Slope.

The plant hardiness zone at Anaktuvuk Pass Ranger Station is 2b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of −42.6 °F (−41.4 °C).

[15] Perennial snowfields and glaciers, which are crucial to various ecosystems within the park, are decreasing at a rapid rate due to warming temperatures.

It extends to the east as far as the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River, which is paralleled by the Dalton Highway and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

[14] The boreal forest extends to about 68 degrees north latitude, characterized by black and white spruce mixed with poplar.

To the north of that line, which coincides with the spine of the Brooks Range, lies cold-arid land that has been described as "Arctic desert."

[14] Fauna include brown bears, black bears, muskoxen, moose, Dall sheep, timber wolves, wolverines, coyotes, lynxes, Arctic ground squirrels, lemmings, voles, marmots, porcupines, river otters, red and Arctic fox species, beavers, wood frogs, snowshoe hares, collared pikas, muskrats, Arctic terns, bald eagles, golden eagles, peregrine falcons, ospreys, great horned and northern hawk-owls.

[14] The Nunamiut people, who had left much of their traditional homelands following a crash in the caribou populations in the early 1900s, resumed a relatively isolated subsistence way of life after returning to the mountains in the late 1930s.

[25] The Gwich'in people, a Northern Athabaskan group also lived in the area in the last 1000 years, moving south of the park in historic times.

[14] The Alaskan interior was not explored until the late 19th century, shortly before discovery of gold in the Klondike brought prospectors to Alaska.

"[26] Marshall spent time in Wiseman during the early 1930s, publishing an account of the place in his 1933 book Arctic Village.

During the 1970s the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) prompted serious examination of the disposition of lands held by the federal government.

In 1980 Congress passed ANILCA, and the monument became Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve on December 2, 1980.