Unalakleet is an Iñupiaq–Yup’ik community built on an ancient beach ridge at an elevation of 7 feet (2 m) at the mouth of the Unalakleet River on the eastern coast of Norton Sound, about 145 miles (234 km) south-east of Nome and 36 miles (58 km) south-south-east of Shaktoolik, Alaska. The native name means “from the southern side” and was spelled “Ounalaklik” in 1850 by Lavrenty A. Zagoskin, a Russian naval officer and explorer of Alaska. Norton Sound is an inlet of the Bering Sea between the Seward Peninsula to the north and the Yukon River delta to the south. Typically ice-free only from June to October, the inlet was named in 1778 by Captain James Cook after Sir Fletcher Norton, then speaker of the British House of Commons. The Unalakleet River starts at an elevation of 2,500 feet (762 m) in the Nulato Hills and flows generally south-west for 90 miles (145 km), draining a watershed of 1,005,417 acres (406,878 ha) to Norton Sound. The main channel is roughly aligned with the Kaltag Fault, which can be traced from Norton Sound to the Yukon River by geologic discontinuities in the bedrock along its entire length. Overlying the bedrock on both sides of the lower Unalakleet River mainstem are sedimentary rocks that developed during the Cretaceous (about 100 million years ago) from deltaic deposits consisting of non-marine fluvial and delta plain deposits that grade downward into shallow-marine deposits.

Archaeologists have found house pits along the Unalakleet beach ridge dating from 200BC to 300AD. The village has long been a major trade centre between the Koyokon Athabascan people on the Yukon and the Inupiat who lived on the coast. The village is situated at the terminus of the Kaltag Portage, an important winter travel route connecting the Yukon River to Norton Sound. The Koyukon Athabascan on the Yukon were considered “professional” traders with a monopoly on trade across the Kaltag Portage. In 1830 the Russian-American Company built a trading post at Unalakleet, and in 1833 a bigger one at St Michael to the south, where deeper waters close to shore allowed large ships to dock. In 1867 the Alaska Purchase transferred the territory from Russia to the United States. In 1898 Sámi reindeer herders from Lapland were brought to Unalakleet by Sheldon Jackson to build sustainable reindeer herds and to teach animal husbandry and herding practices. In 1901 the US Army Signal Corps built a telegraph line over 400 miles from St Michael through Unalakleet and across the Kaltag Portage route to Fort Gibbon at Tanana.

The Russian Orthodox Church opened schools at major Russian-American Company trading posts, and the church continued supporting these schools even after the Alaska Purchase. The US government did not undertake responsibility for education in rural villages until 1884, when Sheldon Jackson was appointed the first general agent of education. He invited Protestant churches to open missions and schools around Alaska, and the Swedish Covenant Church built and managed a school at Unalakleet from 1887 to 1895. In 1933 the US Bureau of Indian Affairs built a new day school at Unalakleet to implement the federal educational philosophy of the time, which stressed reading, speaking and writing the English language, arithmetic and practical skills. In 1978 the State of Alaska constructed a new school, and the federal school was discontinued. Unalakleet maintains a close connection to other villages on Norton Sound and the Yukon Delta by a network of winter trails, including part of the historic Iditarod Trail. The trail originally started in Seward on the Gulf of Alaska and traversed the Chugach Mountains, then up the Susitna River valley to Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range, down the frozen Yukon River to Unalakleet and then along the shore of Norton Sound to Nome. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an annual event commemorating the legacy of dog mushing, including the 1925 serum run to Nome that transported diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay. Read more here and here. Explore more of Unalakleet and Norton Sound here: