Point Hope

History

Before any modern settlement, the Ipiutak lived here. The descriptive Inuit name of the place, "Tikarakh" or "Tikiġaq", commonly spelled "Tiagara", means "forefinger". It was recorded as "Tiekagagmiut" in 1861 by P. Tikhmeniev Wich of the Russian Hydrographic Department and on Russian Chart 1495 it became "Tiekaga". This ancient village site was advantageous, because the protrusion of Point Hope into the sea brought the whales close to the shore. At Tikigaq, they built semi-subterranean houses using mainly whalebone and driftwood. Point Hope is one of the oldest continually occupied sites in North America. While some of the earlier dwellings have been lost to erosion as the point shrinks, it still provides valuable information to archaeologists on how early Eskimos survived in their harsh environment. The Tikigaq site according to Helge Larsen is, "by far the most extensive and complete one-period site yet discovered and described in the entire circumpolar region." The first recorded Europeans to sight this cape were Russian explorers Mikhail Vasiliev and Gleb Shishmaryov of the Imperial Russian Navy on the ships Otkrietie and Blagonamierennie. Vasiliev and Shishmaryov named this landhead Mys Golovnina, after Vice Admiral Vasily Golovnin (1776–1831). The cape at Point Hope was renamed by Captain Frederick William Beechey of the Royal Navy, who wrote on August 2, 1826: "I named it Point Hope in compliment to Sir William Johnstone Hope". According to Archdeacon Stuck Hope was from a "well-known house long connected with the sea". Noel Wien made the first flight here in August 1927. Point Hope residents successfully opposed Project Chariot in 1962. The project would have involved buried thermonuclear detonations some from the village to create a deep-water…

Geography

Point Hope is located in the Point Hope landhead, at the northwestern end of the Lisburne Peninsula, on the Chukchi Sea coast, southwest of Cape Lisburne, Arctic Slope at (68.347052, -166.762917). It is just above the Arctic Circle. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (1.09%) is water. In December 2017, The New York Times profiled Point Hope, reporting that "a surprising, and bittersweet, side effect of global warming" would soon bring Point Hope "one of the fastest internet connections in America".

Race & ethnicity

Most recent

• M 2.5 — 2026-07-12
  58 km NNE of Point Hope, Alaska
• M 3.9 — 2026-01-25
  85 km WSW of Kivalina, Alaska
• M 2.8 — 2025-12-10
  96 km S of Point Hope, Alaska
• M 2.9 — 2025-03-27
  64 km SSW of Point Hope, Alaska
• M 3.3 — 2025-03-13
  72 km SSW of Point Hope, Alaska
• M 2.8 — 2025-03-13
  75 km SSW of Point Hope, Alaska