Anaktuvuk Pass

Anaktuvuk Pass in the central Brooks Range divides the Anaktuvuk River and the John River.

Flight from Coldfoot in a Piper Navajo. Anaktuvuk Pass has a 4800' gravel landing strip which is open year-round. There is no road to Anaktuvuk Pass, but heavy cargo can be brought in overland from the Dalton Highway in the winter.

Piper Navajo airplane flight Charlotte flight airplane flight

Gates of the Arctic National Park: aerial views, ranger station. Much of the Brooks Range west of the Dalton Highway lies within the Gates of the Arctic. Forester and conservationist Robert Marshall explored the area in the 1930s and named it for the two peaks flanking the North Fork of the Koyukuk River, Mt. Boreal and Frigid Crags.

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Village

Anaktuvuk Pass village is located in the mountain pass of the same name slightly north of the Brooks Range within the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve at an elevation of 2200'. The village is the last remaining concentrated population of the Nunamiut, the only true inland group of the Inupiat (Eskimo) in Alaska. The village is on a historic caribou migration route, about 250 miles northwest of Fairbanks and about the same distance southeast of Barrow. The community is dry. The village has a health clinic, a public safety building, and a fire station with fire trucks and an ambulance. The village has electricity, water, sewer service, and trash pickup. The school has classes from pre-school to grade 12 as well as vocational education and basic adult education. The local village corporation, Nunamiut Corporation, owns a grocery and merchandise store which also sells propane fuel and gasoline. The village has telephone, mail, public radio stations, internet, and cable television service.

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The Simon Paneak Memorial Museum has photographs and artifacts of the Nunamiut culture. The museum focuses on the early natural, geological, and cultural history of the area, including the migration of the people across the Bering Land Bridge. It also displays Nunamiut clothing, household goods, and hunting implements from around the time of the first contact with Westerners.

museum sign sled caribou masks

Eskimo drummers and dancers (video)

 

The Eskimo drum, the qilaut, is a frame drum native to the Inuit cultures of the Arctic. The drum has a handle and is made of caribou skin. It is beaten with a stick, the qatuk.

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Last modified 4 November 2019