Alaska's cities

Barrow, Alaska

Top-of-continent town lives with whales, birds and oil

By Leon Unruh / Alaska.com

	Barrow services

And if they're looking for birding, whaling or anthropology, Northern Alaska is the right place.

And in the summer, they get plenty of time to look. The sun doesn't set for 84 days -- between May 10 and Aug. 2. The U.S. Weather Service says the sun rises at 2:49 a.m. May 10 and sets at 1:54 a.m. Aug. 2.

With all the North Slope wetlands, Barrow is positioned neatly to send birders out to check species after species off their lifetime lists. The Barrow Birding Center provides a checklist of 185 species, and the King Eider Inn offers encouragement to the dedicated friends of the feathered.

A few years ago, Birding magazine rated Barrow as one of its top 200 spots nationwide, describing the bird life as "spectacular."

Barrow, now the home of 4,581 people, has been a habitation site for 1,100 to 1,500 years. It was known among the Inupiat Eskimos as Ukpeagvik, or "place where owls are hunted."

Whales

Whale hunting has also been a feature of Barrow life, as Inupiat whalers pursued bowhead, gray, killer and beluga whales to feed the community. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whaling vessels from New England arrived, and Barrow helped in those hunts as well.

The Inupiat Heritage Center, in a program affiliated with the New Bedford, Mass., Whaling National Historical Park, helps make sure today's citizens remember the contribution of North Slope Eskimos to the American whaling industry.

People who want to gain an understanding of life on the Slope might find their guide in a book about whaling published in 1999 by writer-photographer Bill Hess. "Gift of the Whale: The Inupiat Bowhead Hunt, a Sacred Tradition" is a respectful and graphic depiction of whaling in Barrow.

Some of Barrow's traditional ways may echo life of the distant past. Scientists have uncovered five dozen mounds at the Utqiagvik site on the southwestern edge of Barrow. Winter dwellings made of sod now appear as mounds elevated about six feet above the tundra. The 20,000 artifacts found at the site suggest a continuous occupation of the area for the past thousand years.

Protecting a heritage