Utqiagvik
City in
Alaska
Utqiaġvik officially the City of Utqiaġvik and known as Barrow
until 2016, is the largest city of the North Slope Borough in the
U.S. state of Alaska and is located north of the Arctic Circle.
Referred to as “Barrow” beginning in 1901, the city voted to
restore its old Iñupiat name, Utqiaġvik, in 2016
Perched at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, at the point where the
Beaufort and Chukchi seas meet, Barrow, Alaska, is a community that
depends on the ocean for its very survival.
Fish and marine mammals are important sources of food for the
town’s residents. Like other communities on Alaska’s North Slope,
Barrow faces direct threats from the threat of oil spills,
pollution from industrial development, and climate change.
Here are a few pieces of information about life at the
northern edge of Alaska. 10 Facts about
Barrow
Barrow is the northernmost city in the United States, and the
ninth northernmost city in the world.
It is 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
When the sun sets here on Nov. 18 or 19, it doesn’t rise again
for 65 days.
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Barrow is not connected by road to the rest of Alaska, even
though it is the economic center of the North Slope Borough.
More than 4,000 people live here and survive largely by hunting
whales, seals, polar bears, walrus, waterfowl, caribou and catching
fish from the Arctic Ocean or nearby rivers and lakes.
Archaeological sites in the area indicate the Inupiat lived in
this area as far back as 500 AD.
Point Barrow, a headland nine miles from town, is where the
Chukchi and Beaufort seas meet.
Scientists say the Arctic is warming twice as fast at the rest
of the planet, and former North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta has
called Barrow “ground zero for climate-change science.”
On average, Barrow’s high temperature is above freezing only 120
days per year, while temperatures are at or below zero degrees 160
days per year.
Barrow was the setting for last year’s Hollywood movie “Big
Miracle” about an effort to rescue three whales trapped in sea
ice.