The Unalakleet River ( Iñupiaq: ''Uŋalaqłiit Kurgat'') in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

flows southwest from the Kaltag Mountains to near the town of

Unalakleet Unalakleet ( ; ik, Uŋalaqłiq, ; russian: Уналаклит) is a city in Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States, in the western part of the state. At the 2010 census the population was 688, down from 747 in 2000. Unalakleet is known in the ...

, on

Norton Sound Norton Sound (russian: Нортон-Саунд) is an inlet of the Bering Sea on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, south of the Seward Peninsula. It is about 240 km (150 mi) long and 200 km (125 mi) wide. The Yukon ...

of the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Ameri ...

. In 1980, the upper of the river was protected as "wild" as part of the

National Wild and Scenic Rivers System The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-542), enacted by the U.S. Congress to preserve certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free- ...

. Managed by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

, the wild segment of the river is fished for

king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

and

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

salmon,

Arctic grayling The Arctic grayling (''Thymallus arcticus'') is a species of freshwater fish in the salmon family Salmonidae. ''T. arcticus'' is widespread throughout the Arctic and Pacific drainages in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, as well as the upper Misso ...

, and

char Char may refer to: People *Char Fontane, American actress *Char Margolis, American spiritualist * René Char (1907–1988), French poet *The Char family of Colombia: ** Fuad Char, Colombian senator ** Alejandro Char Chaljub, mayor of Barranquilla ...

. Other forms of recreation along the river include boating and camping in summer and snowmobiling, dog mushing, ice fishing, hunting, and trapping in winter. For part of its length, the

Iditarod Trail The Iditarod Trail, also known historically as the Seward-to-Nome Trail, is a thousand-plus mile (1,600 km) historic and contemporary trail system in the US state of Alaska. The trail began as a composite of trails established by Alaskan ...

runs along the Unalakleet.

History

The river's name is Inupiat for "place where the east wind blows." Historically, the river provided a good connection between native coastal settlements and those in the interior along the

Yukon River The Yukon River (Gwichʼin language, Gwich'in: ''Ųųg Han'' or ''Yuk Han'', Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, Yup'ik: ''Kuigpak'', Inupiaq language, Inupiaq: ''Kuukpak'', Deg Xinag language, Deg Xinag: ''Yeqin'', Hän language, Hän: ''Tth'echù' ...

. The route, including what is called the ''Kaltag Portage'', was the shortest connection between the Yukon and Norton Sound. Eskimos have lived near the Unalakleet for many centuries. House pits in the region date to 200 B.C. In the 1830s, after the

Russian-American Company The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty (russian: Под высочайшим Его Императорского Величества покровительством Российская-Американс� ...

established trading posts at St. Michael and Unalakleet, Lieutenant

Lavrenty Zagoskin Lavrenty Alekseyevich Zagoskin (russian: link=no, Лаврентий Алексеевич Загоскин; 21 May 1808 – 22 January 1890) was a Russian naval officer and explorer of Alaska. Zagoskin was born in 1808 in the Russian district of ...

of the Imperial Russian Navy filed the first non-native reports about the Unalakleet. In 1898, herders from Lapland settled along the river, where they established

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

herds. Shortly thereafter, prospectors seeking gold on the nearby

Seward Peninsula The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi S ...

traveled over the Kaltag Portage and downriver to the coast. Subsequent changes included a telegraph line and associated cabins along the river and establishment of a mail route.

References

External links

Unalakleet Wild and Scenic River
- BLM page {{authority control Rivers of Nome Census Area, Alaska Rivers of Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska Rivers of Alaska Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States Rivers of Unorganized Borough, Alaska

History

See also

References

External links