Utqiagvik faces 65 days of darkness as polar night begins

Utqiagvik will go 65 days without sunrise as the borough seat settles into polar night, a stretch that changes how the town handles flights, freight, school days and hunting travel. The city on the Chukchi Sea coast is the northernmost community in the United States and one of Alaska’s largest Iñupiaq settlements.

The sun’s last appearance comes in mid-November, then darkness runs from Nov. 18 to Jan. 23, with civil twilight replacing full daylight for much of the season. The 2020 Census counted 4,927 residents in Utqiagvik, and about 4,000 more people are counted because they work at least half the year in the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields.

The North Slope Borough School District serves communities across the North Slope Borough, and in Utqiagvik winter travel depends on reading snow, ice and sea-ice conditions without the help of the sun. The town’s traditional Iñupiaq name, Ukpeagvik, means “place where snowy owls are hunted.”

The Iñupiat Heritage Center opened in February 1999, is owned and managed by the North Slope Borough, and is legislatively affiliated with New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. It preserves Iñupiat history, language and culture. The Iñupiat and Yupik peoples of northern Alaska and the Bering Strait were whaling for a thousand years before Yankee whalers arrived, and more than 2,000 commercial voyages sailed from New Bedford into Arctic waters during the whaling era.

Near town, Birnirk National Historic Landmark, known locally as Piġniq, is the type site for the Birnirk archaeological culture, considered the earliest manifestation of Iñupiat culture in North America. The remains of a 1,000-year-old umiak with decorative ivory inlays and baleen lashing were found there, and the National Park Service dates the Birnirk tradition to roughly 500 CE to 900 CE. The borough was created by election in 1972 and officially incorporated on July 2, 1972. The city’s name change from Barrow to Utqiagvik took effect on Dec. 1, 2016 after council approval and voter ratification the same year.