St Paul Island, Alaska

St. Paul ( or , ) is a city in the Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska, United States. It is the main settlement of Saint Paul Island in the Pribilofs, a small island group in the Bering Sea. The population was 413 at the 2020 census, down from 479 in 2010. Saint Paul Island is known as a birdwatching haven.

The three closest islands to Saint Paul Island are Otter Island to the southwest, Saint George slightly to the south, and Walrus Island to the east.

St. Paul Island's land area is . St. Paul Island in 2008 had one school (K-12, 76 students), one post office, one bar, one small store, and one church (the Russian Orthodox Sts. Peter and Paul Church), which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

The island was one of the last places where woolly mammoths survived, until around 5,600 years ago.

Geography and geology

St. Paul is located at (57.133806, −170.266614).

Saint Paul is the largest of the Pribilof Islands and lies the farthest north. With a width of at its widest point and a length of on its longest axis (which runs from northeast to southwest), it has a total area of . Volcanic in origin, Saint Paul features a number of cinder cones and volcanic craters in its interior. The highest of these, Rush Hill, rises to on the island's western shore, though most of the upland areas average less than in elevation. Most of the island is a low-lying mix of rocky plateaus and valleys, with some of the valleys holding freshwater ponds. Much of its of shoreline is rugged and rocky, rising to sheer cliffs at several headlands, though long sandy beaches backed by shifting sand dunes flank a number of shallow bays.

Like the other Pribilof Islands, Saint Paul rises from a basaltic base. Its hills are primarily brown or red tufa and cinder heaps, though some (like Polavina) are composed of red scoria and breccia. The island sits on the southern edge of the Bering-Chukchi platform, and may have been part of the Bering Land Bridge's southern coastline when the last ice age's glaciers reached their maximum expansion. Sediment core samples taken on Saint Paul show that tundra vegetation similar to that found on the island today has been present for at least 9,000 years. The thick rough turf is dominated by umbellifers (particularly ''Angelica'') and '' Artemisia'', though grasses and sedges are also abundant.

History and culture

The Aleut people knew of the Pribilofs long before Westerners discovered the islands. They called the islands ''Amiq'', Aleut for "land of mother's brother" or "related land". According to their oral tradition, the son of an Unimak Island elder found them after paddling north in his boat in an attempt to survive a storm that caught him out at sea; when the winds finally died, he was lost in dense fog—until he heard the sounds of Saint Paul's vast seal colonies.

The Pribilofs, named after the Russian navigator Gavriil Pribylov, were discovered in 1786 by Russian fur traders; no Alaska Natives are known to have lived on the island prior to this point. They landed first on St. George on St. Peter and St. Paul's Day, July 12, 1788, and named the larger island to the north St. Peter and St. Paul Island. Three years later the Russian merchant vessel ''John the Baptist'' was shipwrecked off the shore. The crew were listed as missing until 1793, when the survivors were rescued by Gerasim Izmailov.

In the 18th century, the Russian-American Company forced Aleuts from the Aleutian chain (several hundred miles south of the Pribilofs) to hunt seal for them on the Pribilof Islands. Before this the Pribilofs were not regularly inhabited. The Aleuts were essentially slave labor for the Russians—hunting, cleaning, and preparing fur seal skins, which the Russians sold for a great deal of money. The Aleuts were not taken back to their home islands; they lived in inhumane conditions, they were beaten, and they were regulated by the Russians down to what they could eat and wear and whom they could marry. Their descendants live on the two islands today.

In 1870, the now-American owned Alaska Commercial Company (formerly the Russian-American Company) was awarded a 20-year sealing lease by the U.S. government, and provided housing, food and medical care to the Aleuts in exchange for seal harvesting. In 1890, a second 20-year lease was awarded to the North American Commercial Company, however, the fur seals had been severely over-harvested and only an estimated 200,000 fur seals remained. The 1910 Fur Seal Treaty ended private sealing on the islands and placed the community and fur seals under the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Food and clothing were scarce, social and racial segregation were practiced, and working conditions were poor.

Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Russian Orthodox church, was built on the island in 1907.

During World War II, as the Imperial Japanese Army threatened the Aleutians; the 881 Aleuts on the Pribilof islands were forcibly removed, with no more than several hours' notice, to internment in abandoned salmon canneries and mines in Southeast Alaska until May 1944. The Aleut men were brought back to the islands temporarily in the summer of 1943 to conduct the fur seal harvest for the federal government, seal oil being used in the war effort. Most Aleuts from the Pribilofs were imprisoned at Funter Bay on Admiralty Island in Southeast Alaska. In 1979, the Aleut people from the Pribilof islands received $8.5 million in partial compensation for the unfair and unjust treatment they were subject to under federal administration between 1870 and 1946. In 1983, Congress passed the Fur Seal Act Amendments, which ended government control of the commercial seal harvest and most of the federal presence on the island. Responsibility for providing community services and management of the fur seals was left to local entities. USD$20 million was provided to help develop and diversify the Island economy—USD$12 million to St. Paul and USD$8 million to St. George. Commercial harvesting on St. Paul ceased in 1985. Ownership of fur seal pelts is now prohibited except for subsistence purposes.

In May 2025, two F-16 fighter jets from the 8th Fighter Wing based in South Korea, made an emergency landing at St. Paul.

Climate change

Climate change pose a significant threat to the community of St. Paul. Warmer waters mean less ice, dying populations of fish, birds, and crab, and more violent weather. No ice means accelerated coastal erosion, which threatens historical sites like the community graveyard. Trident Seafoods closed the local crab processing plant, and Ravn Alaska has announced it will close the only passenger airline to the island. City fund have dropped by 60 percent, and the local police force has disbanded.

Demographics

Saint Paul Island has the largest Aleut community in the United States, one of the U.S. government's officially recognized Native American ''tribal entities'' of Alaska. Out of a total population of 480 people, 457 of them (86 percent) are Alaska Natives.

Saint Paul first appeared on the 1880 U.S. Census as an unincorporated Aleut village. Of its 298 residents, 284 were Aleut and 14 were white. In 1890, it reported with 244 residents. A plurality of 111 were creole (mixed Russian & Native), 108 were Native, 22 were white and 3 were Asian. It did not report in 1900, but from 1910 to 1940, it reported as "Saint Paul Island." From 1950-onward, it has reported as Saint Paul. It formally incorporated in 1971.

As of the census of 2000, there were 532 people, 177 households, and 123 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 214 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 85.90% Native American, 12.97% white, 0.56% Pacific Islander, and 0.56% from two or more races.

There were 177 households, out of which 38.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.1% were married couples living together, 22.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.5% were non-families. 24.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.88 and the average family size was 3.44.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 29.5% under the age of 18, 9.6% from 18 to 24, 32.5% from 25 to 44, 22.9% from 45 to 64, and 5.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 123.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 125.9 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $50,750, and the median income for a family was $51,750. Males had a median income of $32,583 versus $29,792 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,408. About 6.4% of families and 11.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.9% of those under age 18 and none of those age 65 or over.

Nature and wildlife

Saint Paul Island, like all of the Pribilof Islands, is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Its seabird cliffs were purchased in 1982 for inclusion in the refuge. The island has also been designated as an Important Bird Area.

It is the breeding grounds for more than 500,000 northern fur seals and millions of seabirds, and is surrounded by one of the world's richest fishing grounds.

Woolly mammoths survived on Saint Paul Island until around 5,600 years ago (~3,600 BC), which is the most recent survival of North American mammoth populations. It is thought that this population died out as a result of diminishing fresh water, brought on by climate change making the island more arid, and exacerbated by the erosion of the few freshwater lakes present on the island that the mammoths used for drinking water as a result of mammoth activity.

A mass die-off of puffins at St. Paul Island between October 2016 and January 2017 has been attributed to ecosystem changes resulting from climate change. Climate change has also made it warm enough for rats to survive St. Paul's cold winters, and so the island's harbor is equipped with a number of traps to catch any rats carried in aboard ships.

Birds

No fewer than 319 species of birds have been recorded on the island. In spring (May through mid-June) and fall (August through October), many rare birds, including Siberian vagrants, may be spotted on the island. The cliffs of Saint Paul, Saint George and Otter Island support large numbers of breeding seabirds, including critical nesting habitat for the very range-restricted red-legged kittiwake. The auk family is well represented here, with horned and tufted puffin, thick-billed and common murre, parakeet, crested and least auklets and ancient murrelet occurring as breeders, and several other species occurring as vagrants or seasonal visitors. Breeding ducks include long-tailed duck, northern pintail, and green-winged teal. Breeding shorebirds include semipalmated plover, the Pribilof subspecies of rock sandpiper, least sandpiper and red-necked phalarope. Breeding landbirds are few, but include insular subspecies of gray-crowned rosy finch and Pacific wren, snow bunting, Lapland longspur, and the occasional hoary