Pitmegea River starts from an elevation of about 1,300 feet (396 m) in the De Long Mountains of the western Brooks Range, and flows generally northwest for 37 miles (60 km), draining a watershed of about 351,053 acres (142,066 ha), to Cape Sabine on the Chukchi Sea between Agiak Lagoon to the east and Corwin Bluff to the west, about 70 miles (113 km) south-southwest of Point Lay and 66 miles (106 km) northeast of Point Hope, Alaska. The cape was named in 1826 by Frederick W. Beechey for the astronomer Edward Sabine. The river name was first reported by John W. Kelly in 1890 and is of Iñupiat origin, but its meaning is not known. The watershed is underlain by rocks of the Corwin Formation that formed during the Mesozoic and consists mostly of unaltered sandstones, conglomerates, and shales and contain no beds of limestone or chert. Pleistocene deposits cover much of the Corwin Formation and consists of gravel, silt and permafrost overlain by from 6 to 10 feet (2-3 m) of peat and tundra vegetation. The ground ice does not form a continuous layer, but occurs in irregular, more or less lenticular masses, varying in composition from pure ice to frozen silt. The formation extends inland from the beach for up to 0.5 miles (0.8 km) in a tundra plain cut by numerous deep channels. At the coast, beach cliff erosion has exposed the ground ice, which melts away rapidly until the edges of the peat layer sag down and cover it. Coal was first reported here in 1826 during the expedition led by Beechey to find Sir John Franklin.

Along with other Inuit groups, the Iñupiat originate from the Thule culture who migrated north from islands in the Bering Sea about 2,500 years ago, most likely in pursuit of food. The coastal Iñupiat call themselves Tikiġaġmiut and subsist mostly on fish, walrus, seals, beluga whales, bowhead whales and polar bears. They rely seasonally on food staples including ducks, geese, rabbits, berries, roots, and shoots. Following the arrival of European explorers in 1778 and the subsequent period of industrial whaling through the late 1800s, the Tikiġaġmiut experienced epidemics of introduced diseases as well as starvation as their foods were exploited. During the late 19th century, as steam engines started to replace or supplement sail power, whalers often replenished their fuel supplies from the coal beds at Cape Sabine, most frequently at Corwin Bluff. The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service Thomas Corwin stopped for coal in 1881, and in 1888 the USS Thetis coaled at the Thetis Mine.  In 1884 or 1885, Henry D. Woolfe and John W. Kelly in the employ of the Pacific Steam-Whaling Company built a shore whaling station at Corwin Bluff with Iñupiat labor. Across most of the western Arctic, virtually all able-bodied Iñupiat worked at least part of the year for the commercial whaling industry. In 1898, Lieutenant David H. Jarvis on the Overland Relief Expedition to Point Barrow camped at the Corwin coal mine when only a part of the Woolfe and Kelly house remained standing, most of it having been torn down for firewood by travelers en route to or from Point Barrow.

Coastal travelers, which included mail carriers, often used dog sleds in the winter and relied on well known road houses built along the trail to provide shelter. The winter trail gradually became less maintained with the introduction of airplanes, however it is still used today by snow machines. In 1957, an airstrip was built at Cape Sabine as part of a Distant Early Warning Line Radar station. This station was an intermediate facility to support the Cape Lisburne Air Force station. Intermediate stations were positioned in between main sites. Eight intermediate sites were constructed in Alaska including, from west to east, Cape Sabine, Icy Cape, Peard Bay, Cape Simpson, Kogru, Point McIntyre, Camden Bay, and Demarcation Bay. These sites consisted of a modular living and housing area and its support facilities including water supply, sewage disposal, garage and shop, four oil storage tanks, a gravel surface air strip of 1,250 feet, beaching area, and roads. There was no rotating radar. The facility at Cape Sabine was closed in 1963. The radars and other military buildings were removed around 2000, returning the site to a natural condition. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation identified eight areas of contamination at Cape Sabine that required removal of asbestos, cleanup of existing structures such as a water tank, pump house, pipeline, warehouse, radio tower, soil removal and backfill. Read more here and here. Explore more of Pitmegea River and Cape Sabine here: