Tyonek

History

A Dena'ina Alaska Native village at Tyonek was noted by the explorer James Cook in 1778. The Lebedev-Lastochkin Company, a Russian fur trade venture, maintained a small trapping station on the site of Tyonek. A detachment of the Vancouver Expedition under Joseph Whidbey visited the trading post in May 1794. Whidbey found that the LLC maintained "one large house, about fifty feet long, twenty-four wide, and about ten feet high; this was appropriated to the residence of nineteen Russians..." A smallpox epidemic in the late 1830s killed about half the population. Tyonek became a major port during the Resurrection Creek gold rush of the 1880s, but declined after the founding of Anchorage on the other side of Cook Inlet in 1915. Tyonek was moved to its current site when the original village, located on lower ground, flooded in the 1930s.

Geography

Tyonek is located at (61.060470, -151.230697). Although politically in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, it is located on the mainland on the northwest side of Cook Inlet, across from the Kenai Peninsula. It is bordered to the northeast by the community of Beluga. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which are land and , or 1.61%, are water. The CDP extends from Trading Bay in the west to the mouth of the Chuitna River in the northeast. The present village of Tyonek, with an airstrip, is in the northeast part of the CDP, between the Chuitna River and Tyonek Creek.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Hudsonian Godwit

  Limosa haemastica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  391
• Short-billed Gull

  Larus brachyrhynchus Richardson, 1831 · Aves
  388
• Bonaparte's Gull

  Chroicocephalus philadelphia (Ord, 1815) · Aves
  375
• Arctic Tern

  Sterna paradisaea Pontoppidan, 1763 · Aves
  357
• White-crowned Sparrow

  Zonotrichia leucophrys (J.R.Forster, 1772) · Aves
  355
• Lesser Yellowlegs

  Tringa flavipes (J.F.Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  353
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  349
• Yellow-rumped Warbler

  Setophaga coronata (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  322

Largest nearby schools

• Tebughna School
  Other · Tyonek · 27 students · 13.5:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 3.2 — 2026-10-01
  35 km WSW of Skwentna, Alaska
• M 2.5 — 2026-09-30
  7 km WSW of Willow, Alaska
• M 2.7 — 2026-09-28
  22 km SSW of Susitna, Alaska
• M 2.5 — 2026-09-28
  23 km SSW of Susitna, Alaska
• M 2.8 — 2026-09-28
  45 km W of Salamatof, Alaska
• M 2.9 — 2026-09-27
  24 km WSW of Point MacKenzie, Alaska