Golovin is a community on the northern shore of Norton Sound in the Bering Sea, on a sand spit between Golovnin Lagoon to the north and Golovnin Bay to the south, about 65 miles (105 km) east of Nome and 24 miles (38 km) west-southwest of Elim, Alaska. Originally an Iñupiat village called Cheenik, it took its present name from Vice Admiral Vasily M. Golovnin, for whom early Russian traders named the area. The village sits near the mouth of Cheenik Creek, mostly below 33 feet (10 m) in elevation, though newer developments, including an airport, occupy higher ground. Cheenik Creek rises at 850 feet (259 m) on the Seward Peninsula and flows southwest for 11 miles (18 km), draining a watershed of 18,064 acres (7,310 ha). The watershed comprises rocks of the Nome Complex intruded by the Kachauik pluton: granodiorite–quartz monzonite at higher elevations, gneissic monzonite on west-facing slopes and Quaternary sediments lower down.

From 1807 to 1809 Golovnin commanded the sloop Diana on a round-the-world voyage to the Russian-American Company settlement at Sitka, and in 1817 he commanded the frigate Kamchatka on a survey of Alaska’s northwestern coast. In 1842 Lieutenant Lavrenty Zagoskin, scouting trading-post sites, recorded the village and harbor at present-day Golovin. In 1890 John Dexter, an employee of the Omilak Mine about 30 miles (48 km) north-northeast of Golovin Bay, married an Iñupiat woman and opened a trading post at Cheenik, becoming the local authority on Seward Peninsula prospecting. In 1893 the Mission Covenant of Sweden established a church and school at Cheenik itself, and separately built a reindeer station and mission, later known as the Golovnin Mission, about 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Cheenik near Carolyn Island; a post office named Golovin opened at that mission site in 1899. From 1898 Cheenik served as a supply-relay point for the Council goldfields, with cargo shipped across Golovnin Lagoon and up the Fish River or Niukluk River. Reindeer herding became integral to the Golovnin Mission in the early 1900s, but severe storms forced its abandonment in 1904, when operations relocated to Elim; the post office followed, closing in 1906 and reopening at Cheenik, by then known as Golovin, in 1908. Golovin today is a blended Iñupiat and Yup’ik village that lives largely by fishing, hunting and gathering, and remains a stop on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, about 65 miles (105 km) from the finish in Nome.

Northwestern Alaska’s coastal communities, built near sea level, are vulnerable to flooding and erosion from storm surges driven by extratropical cyclones during fall storms, and Golovin, on its low-lying sand spit, has been identified as one such community at risk. Residents use the spit’s beaches for travel and for subsistence hunting and fishing, and the beach near the Cheenik River mouth has been mined for road-surface material. Episodic flooding recurs on a 5-to-10-year cycle, and the spit can suffer complete overwash roughly once every 50 to 100 years. Sediment is redistributed during these events, but long-term change appears minimal: transport seems balanced under current wave, current and sea-level conditions, with neither erosion nor accretion dominant. Climate change, however, including rising seas, more frequent and severe storms, and longer wave exposure as sea ice retreats, could upset that balance. Read more here and here. Explore more of Golovin and Norton Sound here: