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Fort Yukon (Gwichyaa Zheh in Gwich'in) is a city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska, straddling the Arctic Circle. The population, predominantly Gwich'in Alaska Natives, was 583 at the 2010 census, down from 595 in 2000.
Fort Yukon was the hometown of the late Alaska Congressman Don Young. Served by Fort Yukon Airport, it is also known for having the record highest temperature in Alaska.
This area north of the Arctic Circle was occupied for thousands of years by cultures of indigenous people and in historic times by the Gwich’in people. means "House on the Flats" in Gwichʼin.
What became the village of Fort Yukon developed from a trading post, Fort Yukon, established by Alexander Hunter Murray of the Hudson's Bay Company, on 25 June 1847. Murray drew numerous sketches of fur trade posts and of people and wrote the Journal of the Yukon, 1847–48 , which gave valuable insight into the culture of the Gwich’in at the time. While the post was in Russian America, the Hudson's Bay Company continued to trade there until the American traders expelled it in 1869, following the Alaska Purchase when the Alaska Commercial Company took over the post.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, in the winter of 1897&ndash 1898, Fort Yukon received two hundred prospectors from Dawson City, which was short of supply. A post office was established on July 12, 1898, with John Hawksly as its first postmaster. The settlement suffered over the following decades as a result of several infectious disease epidemics and a 1949 flood.
During the 1950s, the United States Air Force established a base and radar station at Fort Yukon the town was officially incorporated in 1959. Since the late 20th century, due in part to its extreme northerly location and its proximity to Fairbanks, it has become a minor tourist destination.
On February 7, 1984, a Terrier Malemute-type sounding rocket, with a maximum altitude of , was launched from Fort Yukon.
Fort Yukon is located at (66.567586, -145.256327). Fort Yukon is located on the north bank of the Yukon River at its confluence with the Porcupine River, about northeast of Fairbanks.
As of 2014, the Arctic Circle passes through the southern portion of the city at . Due to long-term oscillations in the Earth's axis, the Arctic Circle currently shifts northward by about per year, though varying substantially from year to year due to the complexity of the movement.
According to the United States Census Bureau, Yukon City has a total area of , of which of it is land and of it (5.65%) is water.
Fort Yukon has a strongly continental subarctic climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfc ). In the summer Fort Yukon has midnight sun and in December the sun appears for only a few hours each day.
Summer temperatures are exceptionally high for such a northerly area, being far warmer than the tree line threshold. The highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska occurred in Fort Yukon on June 27, 1915, when it reached . This was also the highest temperature recorded north of the Arctic Circle until June 20, 2020, when it was finally exceeded by a reading at Verkhoyansk, a location similarly known for its extremely continental climate.
Demonstrating the bipolar nature of its climate, Fort Yukon is also subject to severe winters, being less influenced by chinook winds than areas to the west—the winter season absolute maximum being colder than in Fairbanks. Until 1971, Fort Yukon held the all-time lowest temperature record for Alaska and the United States at , and it still holds the record for the lowest mean monthly temperature when the notoriously cold month of December 1917 had an average daily temperature of and the minimum averaged .
The city is among the best places in the world for observing the Aurora Borealis.
Fort Yukon first appeared on the 1880 U.S. Census as an unincorporated village of 109 residents. Of those, 107 were members of the Tinneh Tribe and 2 were Whites. It did not appear on the 1890 census, but has returned in every successive census since 1900. It formally incorporated in 1959, the year Alaska became a state.
As of the census of 2000, there were 595 people, 225 households, and 137 families residing in the city. The population density was 85.0 people per square mile (32.8/km2 ). There were 317 housing units
More about FORT YUKON under "Town Info"
This page uses material from the Wikipedia article Fort Yukon, Alaska , which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.