Elephant Point is a headland and the site of a fish camp near a historical reindeer station in Eschscholtz Bay at the head of Kotzebue Sound, about 56 miles (90 km) southeast of Kotzebue and 20 miles (32 km) north-northwest of Buckland, Alaska. The bay was discovered in 1816 by Lieutenant Otto von Kotzebue and named after the ship’s physician, Dr. Johann F. von Eschscholtz. Eschscholtz Bay is separated from Kotzebue Sound by the Choris Peninsula and Chamisso Island at the mouth of the bay. Elephant Point was named in 1826 by Captain Frederick W. Beechey of the Royal Navy for the bones of ‘elephants’ found in the vicinity, which were probably the fossilized bones of a woolly mammoth. The Iñupiaq of Eschscholtz Bay call the point ‘Siηik’. The point is underlain by flows of andesite and basalt, interbedded with tuff, breccia, and volcanic conglomerate that developed during the Early Cretaceous and has since been mantled by thick deposits of floodplain and tidal flat silt, fine sand, and gravel.
The Kaηigmiut are the Iñupiaq people who inhabit the northeast corner of the Seward Peninsula and the shores of Eschscholtz Bay. Their traditional lands include the Buckland, Kauk, and Kiwalik rivers and the perimeter of Eschscholtz Bay out to the Choris Peninsula. The Kaηigmiut historically lived in small scattered communities consisting of one or a few extended families. During the winter, they inhabited semi-subterranean houses that were built of driftwood and covered with tundra sod. In the summer, most families migrated to the coast to hunt marine mammals such as seals, whales, and walrus, and fish for salmon and sheefish. Elephant Point was the site of a village called Singik where roughly 100 people once lived. The earliest accounts of the Kaηigmiut are from 1816 when Otto Von Kotzebue sailed into Eschscholtz Bay. However, the early explorers of Northwest Alaska had little impact on the lives of the Kaηigmiut until the latter half of the 19th century, when whalers and traders brought firearms and other material innovations. Introduced diseases resulted in a drastic population decline in the late 1800s, followed by the arrival of missionaries in 1897. Gold mining and reindeer herding in the 1920s and 1930s accelerated the move to modern settlements and wage employment. A reindeer station and school were established at the mouth of the Buckland River and the Kaηigmiut of Eschscholtz Bay eventually settled 16 miles (26 km) upstream in the permanent village of Buckland.
Reindeer herding was introduced to the area in 1893 when the Alaska Reindeer Service was established as an integral part of the educational system of northern and western Alaska. This venture was commercialized by the Lomen Company in the early 1900s. Lomen Company was an American meatpacking industry based in Nome and founded in 1914 by brothers Carl and Alfred Lomen. Between 1920-1929, the Lomen Brothers invested in the purchase of reindeer herds and developed a network of slaughterhouses, cold storage facilities, and reindeer farms. They bought their first herd in 1914, created a natural cold storage plant at Elephant Point in 1920, and organized the Lomen Transportation Company to meet the problem of insufficient ocean shipboard refrigeration. In 1930, they purchased a ship named Arthur J. Baldwin outfitted with refrigeration. For the next six years, the ‘Reindeer Ship’ transported supplies such as lumber and gas from Seattle to northern ports, and shipments of reindeer meat from the Lomen farms to Seattle on returning voyages. The venture collapsed in 1937 when the U.S. Congress passed the Reindeer Act which transferred the possession of all Alaskan reindeer herds to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Read more here and here. Explore more of Elephant Point and Eschscholtz Bay here:
