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Point Barrow or Nuvuk is a headland on the Arctic coast in the U.S. state of Alaska, northeast of Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow). It is the
northernmost point Northernmost may refer to: * List of northernmost items * List of northernmost settlements *List of countries by northernmost point *Northernmost point of land See also *Lists of extreme points This is a list of lists of places considered the mos ...
of all the territory of the United States, at , south of the North Pole. (The northernmost point on the North American mainland, Murchison Promontory in Canada, is farther north.) Point Barrow is an important geographical landmark, marking the limit between two marginal seas of the
Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...
, the
Chukchi Sea Chukchi Sea ( rus, Чуко́тское мо́ре, r=Chukotskoye more, p=tɕʊˈkotskəjə ˈmorʲɪ), sometimes referred to as the Chuuk Sea, Chukotsk Sea or the Sea of Chukotsk, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded on the west b ...
to the west and the
Beaufort Sea The Beaufort Sea (; french: Mer de Beaufort, Iñupiaq: ''Taġiuq'') is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Fr ...
to the east. It was named by English explorer Frederick William Beechey in 1826 for Sir John Barrow, a statesman and geographer of the
British Admiralty The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of it ...
. The water around it is normally ice-free for two or three months a year, but this was not the experience of the early explorers. Beechey could not reach it by ship and had to send a ship's boat ahead. In 1826 John Franklin tried to reach it from the east and was blocked by ice. In 1837 Thomas Simpson walked 50 miles west to Point Barrow after his boats were stopped by ice. In 1849 William Pullen rounded it in two whale boats after sending two larger boats back west because of the ice. Point Barrow has been a jumping-off point for many Arctic expeditions, including the Wilkins-Detroit Arctic Expeditions and the April 15, 1928, Eielson- Wilkins flight across the Arctic Ocean to
Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...
. It is 33 km (20.5 mi) northeast of the Rogers-Post Site, the scene of the airplane crash on August 15, 1935 that killed
aviator An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its Aircraft flight control system, directional flight controls. Some other aircrew, aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are al ...
Wiley Post and his passenger, the entertainer
Will Rogers William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma ...
. The "Shooting Station" is located a few miles southwest of Point Barrow. It is so named because between 1965 and 1972 it was a launch site for Nike-Cajun and Nike Apache
sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...
s. There is a nearby Global Atmosphere Watch atmospheric monitoring station. It is immediately adjacent to the
Birnirk site The Birnirk site ( Iñupiaq: ''Piġniq'') is an archaeological site near Utqiagvik, Alaska. It includes sixteen prehistoric mounds which have yielded evidence of very early Birnirk and Thule culture. It is the type site of the Birnirk culture, ...
. There are still summer cabins constructed by locals and used for subsistence hunting and fishing in this area. The term ''
Point Barrow whales Point Barrow or Nuvuk is a headland on the Arctic coast in the U.S. state of Alaska, northeast of Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow). It is the northernmost point of all the territory of the United States, at , south of the North Pole. (The nor ...
'' refers to
gray whale The gray whale (''Eschrichtius robustus''), also known as the grey whale,Britannica Micro.: v. IV, p. 693. gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, Korean gray whale, or California gray whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and bree ...
s that were trapped in the ice at Point Barrow in 1988, which attracted attention from the public worldwide. The Iñupiat do not hunt gray whales and joined in rescue operations which also involved Soviet icebreakers.


Demographics

Point Barrow first appeared on the 1880 U.S. census as the unincorporated Inuit village of "Kokmullit" (AKA Nuwuk). All 200 residents were Inuit. In 1890, it returned as Point Barrow, which also included the Refuge & Whaling Station and native settlements of Nuwuk, Ongovehenok and winter village on "Kugaru" (Inaru) River. It reported 152 residents, of which 143 were Native, 8 were "other race" and 1 was White.http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1890a_v8-01.pdf It did not report in 1900, but appeared again from 1910-1940. It has not reported separately since.


Archaeological site

Archaeological evidence indicates that Point Barrow was occupied by the ancestors of the Iñupiat for almost 1,000 years prior to the arrival of the first Europeans. Occupation continued into the 1940s. The headland is an important archaeological site, yielding burials and artifacts associated with the Thule culture, including uluit and
bola Bola may refer to: People * Bola (name), a surname and given name * Darrell Fitton, electronic musician from Manchester, England, AKA "Bola" and "Jello" Geography * Bola (volcano), a volcano on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea * Bo ...
. The waters off Point Barrow are on the
bowhead whale The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus'') is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and the only living representative of the genus ''Balaena''. They are the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and subarctic waters, ...
migration route and it is surmised that the site was chosen to make hunting easier. There are also burial mounds in the area, at the nearby
Birnirk site The Birnirk site ( Iñupiaq: ''Piġniq'') is an archaeological site near Utqiagvik, Alaska. It includes sixteen prehistoric mounds which have yielded evidence of very early Birnirk and Thule culture. It is the type site of the Birnirk culture, ...
, associated with the earlier Birnirk culture, a pre-Thule culture first identified in 1912 by Vilhjalmur Stefansson while excavating in the area. The settlement was called Nuvuk and it was near the "migration path of bowhead whales which would become the cultural and nutritional centre of Nuvuk life."


See also

* Alaska North Slope * Utqiaġvik, Alaska * Iḷisaġvik College * North Slope Borough * Rogers-Post Site * Umiak


References


External links


Rocket launches at Point Barrow

The papers of Henry W. Greist on Point Barrow
at Dartmouth College Library {{Authority control Barrow, Point Landforms of North Slope Borough, Alaska