Tigara Peninsula is a prominent point of land extending west for 13 miles (21 km) from the mouth of the Kukpuk River on the Lisburne Peninsula into the Chukchi Sea, about 320 miles (516 km) southwest of Utqiaġvik and 151 miles (244 km) northwest of Kotzebue, Alaska. The Iñupiaq name, Tikiġaq or Tigara, derives from a word meaning “forefinger.” The first recorded Europeans to sight the cape were Russian naval officers Mikhail Vasiliev and Gleb Shishmaryov, who sailed aboard the Otkrytie and Blagonamerennyi in 1822. They named it Mys Golovnina, after Vice Admiral Vasily Golovnin. In 1826, Captain Frederick William Beechey of the Royal Navy renamed it Point Hope, after Sir William Johnstone Hope, a British naval officer and politician.

The spit owes its form to the combined influence of the Kukpuk River and a coastal current that flows northward out of Kotzebue Sound. The peninsula is a twin-spit complex enclosing several lagoons, the largest being Marryat Inlet. The north spit is anchored by the rugged cliffs of the Lisburne Hills, and the south spit by Cape Thompson. Its beach ridge sequence that extends across Point Hope predominantly represents variability in storm-driven wave energy, sediment supplied by coastal erosion, and onshore transport of shelf gravels by the ice pack. When multiyear ice reaches 36 to 48 feet (11 to 15 m) thick, it becomes grounded in shallow nearshore water, and wind and currents push it against the shore, shoving gravel and sand up the beach face and building ridges.

Iñupiat and their ancestors have occupied Tigara Peninsula continuously for more than 2,500 years. Settlements on the peninsula include Ipiutak, Old Tikiġaq, New Tikiġaq (also called Tigara), and a former whaling station, originally named Coopers and now known as Jabbertown, established in 1887 and operated until 1910. In 1976, the village of Tigara was abandoned because of shore erosion, and the entire community moved about two miles (3.2 km) east to establish the new village of Point Hope.The beach ridges provided dry ground for dwellings, and the spit gave access to a polynya that opens under northerly winds. The site was especially well placed for hunting whales that pass close to shore during their seasonal migration. Today Point Hope is a permanent community of about 830 residents, most of them Iñupiat, on an elevated gravel pad two miles east of the old village, where the remains of Old Tigara, including sod-house mounds and a whalebone cemetery, remain visible. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tigara Peninsula and the Chukchi Sea here: