The Tok Cut-Off is often considered part of the Glenn Highway, for a total length of 328 miles (528 km).

The longest stretch of freeway in Alaska runs mostly along the Glenn Highway, beginning in north Anchorage, continuing onto the Parks Highway at the interchange of the two roads, and ending in the city limits of Wasilla, for a total of approximately 38 miles (61 km).

This 38-mile (61 km) portion of the Glenn Highway is the only road access to Anchorage for most of the state (with the exception of the Kenai Peninsula on the Seward Highway), and as such is the main traffic corridor for Anchorage's suburbs in the Chugiak-Eagle River and Mat-Su areas.

The highest point on the highway is 3,332 feet (1,016 m) at Eureka Summit, which sits on the divide between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountain ranges.

[4] It is named for Captain Edwin Glenn (1857–1926), leader of an 1898 U.S. Army expedition to find an Alaska route to the Klondike gold fields[5] (the eventual Richardson Highway).