Samalga Island is 4 miles (6 km) long and 0.5 miles (0.8 km) wide located between Umnak Island to the east and the Islands of Four Mountains to the west, approximately 317 miles (510 km) east-northeast of Adak and 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Nikolski, Alaska. The island is flat, entirely covered with grass, and part of the Fox Island group in the eastern Aleutian Islands. The shoreline is lined with rocks and small boulders, with occasional sandy beaches. A rocky ledge fringes the entire island, extending from a few hundred feet to thousands of feet offshore at low tide. On the southwest end, this ledge becomes an extensive reef that stretches nearly 2 miles (3.2 km) west-southwest into Samalga Pass. In heavy weather, breakers can be seen over this area for a considerable distance. Samalga Island is part of the Aleutian Arc, formed due to the northwestward subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the North American Plate. It originated in the early Eocene, about 55–50 million years ago, probably due to the buckling of the Kula Plate. Motion between the Kula Plate and the North American Plate along the Bering Shelf margin ended in the early Eocene. The Aleutian Basin, the ocean floor north of the Aleutian Arc, remains as part of the Kula Plate trapped when volcanism and subduction shifted south to their current locations. The basement rocks of the Aleutian Ridge consist of three stratigraphic units: volcanic rocks from the Eocene, marine sedimentary rocks from the Oligocene to Miocene, and sedimentary and igneous rocks from the Pliocene and Quaternary. Volcanic lava flows occurred episodically, with a significant island arc-building period in the Eocene. The dominant Aleutian Arc lava ranges from basalt to dacite. Bedrock on Samalga comprises slightly metamorphosed and deformed layers of argillite and tuff.

Samalga Island is uninhabited today, although it had both prehistoric and historical human presence. At the end of the Pleistocene glacial period, the eastern Aleutians extended the current Alaska Peninsula. Sea levels were about 72 feet (22 meters) below present, and ocean passes in the Fox Islands were likely above water. This longer peninsula reached southwestern Umnak Island, where Samalga Pass created a water barrier for migrating humans and terrestrial animals. A prehistoric archaeological site on Anangula Island, off southwestern Umnak Island, dates to about 8,000 years ago. The Chaluka site near Nikolski shows human habitation over 4,000 years. The Unangan people, descendants of these early inhabitants, lived in the Aleutian Islands before Russian explorers and fur traders arrived. They led a subsistence lifestyle, hunting sea otters, sea lions, whales, and seals from one- and two-man boats called baidarkas. These slender boats were made of sealskin stretched over a whalebone frame and propelled by a single- or double-bladed paddle. The Unangan first encountered Russians in 1741, when an expedition led by Vitus Bering reached the islands. The Russians quickly established control over Unangan villages and organized a hunting serfdom to exploit Indigenous hunters’ skills for collecting sea otter pelts. In 1763, a group of Aleuts rebelled, destroying four Russian ships at Unalaska. The Russians retaliated by destroying Unangan villages on Umnak, Samalga, and the Islands of Four Mountains. The Aleut population then declined sharply, mostly due to European diseases, hunting accidents, and internecine warfare. By the late 18th century, Russian Orthodox missionaries arrived in Alaska, baptizing many Unangan Aleuts. Russian Orthodoxy soon became the dominant religion, and missionaries offered some protection from fur traders, as well as medicine and literacy. Today, Russian influence is evident in the Unangan Aleut vocabulary, Russian foods, and Orthodox churches. Since the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which transferred land claims from the federal government to Alaska Natives, regional and village corporations have re-established guardianship over local lands and communities.

The Western Aleutian Islands were the first to be regularly visited and settled by the Russians following Bering’s voyage to Alaska. In 1750, Andrean Tolstykh introduced a breeding pair of Arctic foxes from Bering Island to Attu Island. Trapping began after the foxes multiplied. The next documented introduction of Arctic foxes occurred around 1790 on Atka Island, where by 1825, the animals were plentiful. The Russian-American Company encouraged fox introductions, and as early as 1819, the governor ordered the importation of breeding foxes to the central Aleutian Islands. Arctic foxes from Saint George Island in the Pribilof Islands were introduced, followed by red foxes from the mainland and Unalaska Island. Following the Alaska Purchase in 1867, fox introductions proliferated when the U.S. government began leasing islands for fox farming. In 1881, Samuel Applegate, originally from New Jersey, arrived in the Aleutians to manage weather stations for the US Signal Corps. When it was time to return to the States, he resigned and remained at Unalaska. There he built a house, owned a trading post, and captained a schooner, mapping stretches of the Aleutian coastline and Prince William Sound. In the early 1890s, he was drawn to fox farming. By 1897, he had stocked Samalga Island with blue foxes from the Pribilof Islands and hired Nikolski men to trap them. The number of pelts from an island depended on its size, trapping effort, physiographic features like beach extent, breeding bird populations as a food source, and predation, which on isolated islands was mainly by eagles. Applegate tried to reduce the estimated 75% mortality rate of his fox pups by paying 25 cents for every pair of eagle claws locals delivered. This bounty cost him $275 for 1,100 eagles. Over 21 years, Samalga Island produced 771 pelts. In 1936, Olaus Murie began a survey of the harmful effects of foxes on seabirds and waterfowl. His findings, corroborated by Unangan trappers, showed that introduced foxes were destroying seabird populations. The US Fish and Wildlife Service began eradicating foxes in the Aleutian Islands in 1949. Of the 455 Alaskan islands where foxes were introduced, they currently remain on 46, including Samalga Island. Read more here and here. Explore more of Samalga and the Fox Islands here: