Cape Thompson is a headland on the Chukchi Sea coast near the site of Project Chariot, about 41 miles (66 km) northwest of Kivalina and about 31 miles (50 km) southeast of Point Hope, Alaska. Chariot is at the mouth of Ogotoruk Creek between Sigrikpak Ridge to the east and Saligvik Ridge, the topographic feature of Cape Thompson, to the west. The first known Europeans to sight the cape were Mikhail Vasiliev on Otkrytie and Gleb Shishmaryov on Blagonamierennie, who in 1820 explored Alaska’s coast from Kotzebue Sound to Icy Cape for the Imperial Russian Navy. They named the headland Mys Rikord after Admiral Peter Ivanovich Rikord, then governor of Kamchatka. In 1826 Lieutenant Frederick W. Beechey named it after Sir John Deas Thomson, a Royal Navy commissioner. Beechey misspelled the name “Thompson” on his chart, which cartographers subsequently copied. Cape Thompson is the southern expression of the Lisburne Hills, which extend north to Cape Lisburne and generally form the Lisburne Peninsula. The underlying bedrock at Chariot comprises marine sedimentary rocks that are successively younger from west to east. Limestone and dolomite beds that developed during the Mississippian age (roughly 359 to 323 million years ago) predominate in the western part of the area and at Chariot. The bedrock is covered by a few inches to tens of feet of unconsolidated Quaternary sedimentary deposits, peat, and tundra.

The Iñupiaq at Point Hope historically called Cape Thompson uivag garvitog, which means “near cape”, and it was an area where they hunted caribou and birds and gathered eggs each summer. In 1826, when Beechey visited, several Point Hope families were camped near the cape. The area south of Cape Thompson was the site of a fierce battle between the Tikirarmiut people of Point Hope and the Nuataarmiut people of the upper Noatak River. In 1838 an expedition led by Aleksandr F. Kashevarov discovered human bones strewn among the steep slopes and several graves in shallow holes. The bodies in the graves were those of Tikirarmiut people of Point Hope, placed there by their compatriots after the fight. The bones lying around belonged to the encroaching Nuataarmiut people but had already been scavenged by foxes and birds. In 1924, when Knud Rasmussen traversed the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic coast on the Fifth Thule Expedition, he visited Charles Brower in Utqiaġvik, who talked about the battle. According to Rasmussen, the Iñupiat who lived between Norton Sound and the Arctic Ocean were known for their warlike nature. The different tribes were constantly feuding among themselves and were often hostile to people who encroached on their territory. Fighters were mostly armed with bows and arrows, had breastplates armored with walrus bone or tusks, and carried great saw-toothed clubs designed to crush an enemy’s skull.

Chariot was named after Project Chariot, a proposal by the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1958 to construct an artificial harbor at the mouth of Ogotoruk Creek by burying and detonating a series of nuclear devices as part of Project Plowshare. Plowshare was the overall American program for developing techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes such as rock blasting, stimulation of tight gas, chemical-element manufacture and probing the composition of the earth’s deep crust. Many Plowshare projects were proposed in Alaska, mostly for harbor construction and navigational channels. The plan was championed by Edward Teller, who traveled throughout the state touting the harbor as an important economic development. Alaskan political leaders, newspaper editors, the state university’s president and even church groups all rallied in support of the massive detonation. Opposition came from the village of Point Hope and a few scientists. Although the detonation never occurred, the site was radioactively contaminated by an experiment to estimate the effect of radioactive debris on water sources. Radioactive material from a nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site was transported to the Chariot site in August 1962, then used in several experiments and buried. Residents did not learn of these experiments until research documents were declassified in the 1990s. Read more here and here. Explore more of Chariot and Cape Thompson here: