Poss Mountain

Poss Mountain is a 6,180-foot summit in Alaska’s Philip Smith Mountains of the Brooks Range, north of the Arctic Circle near the Dalton Highway. Robert Marshall named it around 1930 for “Poss” Postlethwaite, an early Wiseman-area gold prospector whom Marshall called “the oldest man in the Koyukuk,” noting he had spent 32 winters there; the U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially adopted the name in 1932. In a subarctic setting of long, bitter winters and short, cool summers, the mountain’s runoff feeds tributaries of the Middle and South Forks of the Koyukuk River. It also lends its name to a research natural area created to protect mineral licks and Dall sheep lambing habitat.

Wiseman, Alaska · United States