Savoonga is a Siberian Yupik community on the northern flank of the Kookooligit Mountains at Savoonga Point on the north coast of Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, about 164 miles (265 km) south-west of Nome and 39 miles (63 km) east of Gambell, Alaska. Saint Lawrence Island is 100 miles (160 km) long east-west and 9 to 34 miles (15-55 km) wide north-south. The eastern end consists largely of a wave-cut platform elevated as much as 100 feet (30 m) above sea level. Isolated upland areas comprise granitic plutons rising as much as 1,800 feet (550 m) above the wave-cut platform. The central part is dominated by the Kookooligit Mountains, which extend over 210,040 acres (85,000 ha) and rise to 2,066 feet (630 m). The range consists of basalt from a Quaternary shield volcano capped with over 100 smaller volcanic cones. Large parts of Saint Lawrence Island are covered by unconsolidated sediments composed mostly of modern beach and bar deposits fringing the coastlines, and former beach and bar deposits mantling elevated wave-cut platforms. Glacial drift deposited by an ice sheet originating from the Chukotka Mountains on Siberia‘s Chukotka Peninsula is exposed along parts of the north coast.

Archaeologists recognize two major Arctic cultural traditions over the past 5,000 years. The first was the Paleo-Inuit tradition, widely understood to represent an expansion of Siberian hunting and gathering peoples into eastern Siberia’s Chukotka Peninsula, across the Bering Strait into Alaska, and eventually colonizing the eastern Arctic including Greenland‘s coasts 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. The second was the Neo-Inuit tradition, which emerged in the central and western Bering Strait about 2,000 years ago as the Okvik/Old Bering Sea culture. The archaeological record suggests Saint Lawrence Island was first occupied 2,000 to 2,500 years ago by people of the Okvik culture. Prehistoric and early historic human occupation was characterized by periods of abandonment and reoccupation. Human skeletons show evidence of famine, and occupation may have depended on food availability. Travel to and from the Siberian mainland, only 58 miles (93 km) away, was common, so the island was likely used as a hunting base; occupation sites were reused periodically rather than permanently occupied. The first European to visit was Vitus Bering on Saint Lawrence’s Day, August 10th 1728.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the island had a population of about 4,000 people inhabiting numerous villages. Between 1878 and 1880 a famine devastated the population and most people migrated away. In 1900 reindeer were introduced; by 1917 the herd had grown to over 10,000 animals. A reindeer camp was established near present-day Savoonga in 1916, and the village was established near the camp in the 1930s. In 1971 Savoonga became joint owner of Saint Lawrence Island with Gambell, the island’s only other community. The local economy consists mostly of subsistence hunting for walrus, seals, fish and bowhead whales. The island’s abundance of marine mammals and seabirds is due largely to the Anadyr Current, which brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface from the deep waters of the Bering Sea shelf edge. The island has no trees; the only woody plant is Arctic willow, which grows no higher than 1 foot (30 cm). Most islanders speak Siberian Yupik. Today there are daily flights from Nome to Savoonga Airport, weather permitting. Read more here and here. Explore more of Savoonga and Saint Lawrence Island here: