The refuge at the top of the Alaska Highway is getting exhibits built for blind visitors

The visitor center at Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge is the first one most travelers see after they drive into Alaska, and its next round of exhibits is being built by a company that specializes in exhibits for people who cannot see them.

Sea Reach, Ltd. of Sheridan, Oregon, won $285,136 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to build and install the second phase of interpretive exhibits at the refuge's log-cabin visitor center, with the work due by September 2027. The firm's focus is accessibility for blind and visually impaired visitors.

The exhibits come from designs the government already has. Sea Reach builds them, ships them, installs them and tests them: graphics, multimedia components, and taxidermy and natural materials, all matched to the paint colors, wood stains and fonts from Phase 1.

Tetlin is one of only two Alaska refuges anyone can drive to. Its boundary runs along the south side of the Alaska Highway for almost 65 miles from the Canadian border, and the Fish and Wildlife Service says that puts it in front of nearly every visitor who enters the state by road.

What they are entering is a flyway. The upper Tanana valley is called the Tetlin Passage because it funnels migrating birds between Canada, the Lower 48 and Central and South America, and the refuge has one of the highest densities of nesting waterfowl in Alaska. As many as 65,000 ducklings fledge from its lakes in a year. Sandhill cranes come through in mid-September, trumpeter and tundra swans in early October, and caribou wander near the highway in winter.

The award was a small-business set-aside competed under simplified acquisition procedures. One offer came in.