Scammon Bay is a small community on the left bank of the Kun River about 1 mile (1.6 km) upstream from its mouth in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and lies approximately 147 miles (237 km) northwest of Bethel and 73 miles (118 km) southwest of Emmonak, Alaska. The village is also known by its Yup’ik name, Mariak. The English name is derived from the nearby Scammon Bay, an estuary measuring 13 miles (21 km) across located at the base of the Askinuk Mountains on the north coast of Cape Romanzof. The bay was named in 1870 by William Healy Dall in honor of Captain Charles M. Scammon, Chief of Marine for the Western Union Telegraph Expedition. 

The Western Union Telegraph Expedition, also known as the Russian–American Telegraph, was a project undertaken from 1865 to 1867 to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California, to Moscow, Russia. The proposed route was to traverse California, Oregon, Washington Territory, the Colony of British Columbia, and Russian America, continue under the Bering Sea, and stretch across Siberia to Moscow. From Moscow, the lines would connect with the rest of Europe. This project was intended as an alternative to the long and deep underwater cables in the Atlantic Ocean.

Charles Melville Scammon was a 19th-century naturalist and whaling captain. Born in Maine, he initially captained merchant vessels across the Atlantic. Like many Americans, Scammon turned westward during the 1849 Gold Rush in search of better prospects. In California, he commanded whaling ships in the 1860s and 1870s, becoming the first to hunt gray whales off the California and Baja coastlines. He is noted for discovering the gray whale nursery lagoons on the Baja Peninsula, including Scammon’s Lagoon. Unfortunately, this discovery contributed to the near extinction of the species due to commercial whaling. Scammon later authored several books, including The Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America (1874). Read more here and here. Explore more of Scammon Bay and Kun River here: