Diamond Point is a prominent headland situated between Iliamna Bay to the north and Cottonwood Bay to the south, about 126 miles (203 km) northeast of King Salmon and 75 miles (121 km) west of Homer, Alaska. The name was first published in 1907 on charts by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Iliamna Bay is a fjord that extends northwest for six miles (10 km) from the west coast of lower Cook Inlet into the Chigmit Mountains on the southeast coast of the Alaska Peninsula. The name derives from Iliamna Lake; according to George C. Martin of the US Geological Survey, Iliamna is reputedly “the name of a mythical great blackfish, supposed to inhabit this lake, which bites holes in the bidarkas of bad natives.” The Bruin Bay fault system is roughly aligned with the west coast of Cook Inlet and separates the Alaska-Aleutian Range batholith to the west from sedimentary rocks derived from erosion of the batholith and overlying volcanic rocks of the Talkeetna magmatic arc. The batholithic rocks show a rough age progression from older to younger, east to west. Diamond Point consists of granodiorite and quartz monzonite that developed during the Jurassic (about 201 million to 143 million years ago). The coasts of Iliamna and Cottonwood bays are fringed by unconsolidated surficial deposits that include volcanic debris from nearby Mount Iliamna.
People have occupied this area for at least 11,000 years, representing a wide variety of cultures, including small, highly mobile bands of hunters and socially stratified fisher-hunter-gatherers who built substantial seasonal villages and relied on stored salmon. Lower Cook Inlet represents a cultural crossroads inhabited historically by the Dena’ina Athabascans, whose principal territory lies to the northeast; the Yup’ik from Bristol Bay; and the Alutiiq from further south along the Alaska Peninsula. They traded, fought, kept each other as slaves, and occasionally intermarried. The relatively lush environment and subsistence based on terrestrial mammals—and one of the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world, in Bristol Bay and Iliamna Lake—allowed the Dena’ina, at least in late prehistoric and historic times, to maintain several stable semi-permanent villages. The Yup’ik seasonally traveled east across the peninsula from Bristol Bay to trade, hunt sea otters and belugas, and gather clams; the mountains to Cook Inlet are only about 12 miles (19 km) away. The introduction of Russian trade goods in the late 18th century is manifested in the archaeological record by the accumulation of wealth symbols, including dentalium shells, glass beads, and other Russian goods. Between 1910 and 1930, several villages, including Kijik and Old Iliamna, were abandoned in favor of Pedro Bay, Nondalton, Kokhanok, and New Iliamna.
A massive copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry deposit known as Pebble lies beneath rolling, permafrost-free terrain in the Iliamna region, approximately 200 miles (322 km) southwest of Anchorage and 60 miles (97 km) west of Cook Inlet. The closest communities are the villages of Iliamna, Newhalen, and Nondalton, each about 17 miles (27 km) from the deposit. Plans were proposed to develop an open-pit mine and associated infrastructure for an initial 20-year operating life, during which approximately 1.44 billion tons of material would be mined. Beyond the mine site itself, the project would have had three other major components: a transportation corridor to move mineral concentrate and deliver supplies; a port facility; and a natural gas pipeline from the Kenai Peninsula to power the mine. Diamond Point was the proposed site for the port facility. Read more here and here. Explore more of Diamond Point and Iliamna Bay here: