Gordon is the site of a historical trading post near Demarcation Point, about 210 miles (338 km) northwest of Inuvik, Northwest Territories, and 63 miles (102 km) southeast of Kaktovik, Alaska. The point is a 2.5 miles (4 km) long barrier spit separating Demarcation Bay to the south from the Beaufort Sea to the north. Sir John Franklin named the point in 1826 because it was then located at the boundary between British and Russian dominions on America’s northern coast. The trading post was named for Thomas Gordon, who partnered with Charles Brower in Barrow (now Utqiagvik) to establish the remote station in 1917 for the H.B. Liebes Company of San Francisco. The area is part of a coastal plain extending along the base of the Brooks Range, mostly composed of unconsolidated Pleistocene sediments originating as shallow-water deposits. The plain is generally low-relief, with inland elevations between 260 and 590 feet (80-180 m), and terminates at the Beaufort Sea as tundra bluffs 3 to 50 feet (1-15 m) high. The Alaska Beaufort Sea extends 507 miles (816 km) from Point Barrow to Demarcation Point and consists of four barrier island chains occupying 52 percent of the coast. Sediment is supplied to the barrier system from erosion of tundra bluffs and reworking of existing barrier islands. Along the entire coast, all barrier systems—including islands, spits and inlets—are migrating westward, driven by northeast winds and waves during only three ice-free months each year.

The coast from Barter Island in the west to Cape Bathurst in the east, including the Mackenzie River Delta, is the traditional territory of the Mackenzie Inuit, or Inuvialuit. The archaeological record indicates that the ancestors of the Inuvialuit were Thule people who moved eastward from Alaska around 1000 AD. They were the most easterly group to maintain trading and cultural ties with the Alaskan Inupiat to the west. In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie first descended the great river that now bears his name and reached the waters of the Beaufort Sea. In 1826 a party of British explorers led by John Franklin traveled westward from the mouth of the Mackenzie River along the Arctic coast. They crossed the 141st meridian west and named it Demarcation Point, honoring a political boundary agreed between Russian and British diplomats a year earlier. The group explored the coast for 370 miles westward, attempting to rendezvous with Captain Frederick W. Beechey on the HMS Blossom at Icy Cape, but turned back 160 miles from Point Barrow. In 1883 Ned Herendeen of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company invited Charles Brower from New York and George Leavitt from New Bedford to join a small party departing San Francisco to investigate coal-mining possibilities near Cape Lisburne in the Arctic. Attracted by the lure of adventure, they accepted and remained at Point Barrow, where Leavitt became a whaling captain and Brower a trader.

Brower established a trading post at Barrow and married two Inupiat women, fathering 14 children. The Inupiat and Mackenzie Inuit became involved in whaling and the fur trade during the 19th century, at first indirectly with Russian traders and later working at posts like Barrow. By 1893 Brower and partner Tom Gordon from Glasgow had started the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company. In 1917 Gordon and his brother-in-law, Andrew Akootchook, moved to Demarcation Point with their families. The Gordon family later moved west to Barter Island, and Gordon’s son, Mickey, took over the trading post and ran it until the late 1920s. In the early 20th century five trading posts operated between Beechey Point and Demarcation Point, providing locations where furs could be traded for manufactured goods. Following the crash of the fox-fur market, some Inuit families moved to Mackenzie River villages, where they remain. Other families moved to Barter Island or Barrow. Many Inupiat, Inuit and Dene Athabascan people from the region still visit Gordon, since it serves as a stopover for people taking boat trips to Canada to visit friends and relatives. The trading post is gone, but the area remains a good base for fishing and hunting waterfowl, caribou and polar bears. Read more here and here. Explore more of Gordon and Demarcation Point here: