Cape Krusenstern National Monument

Cape Krusenstern National Monument preserves a remote stretch of Arctic coast in northwestern Alaska where natural change and human history are layered together. Its long lagoons, coastal plain, limestone hills, and permafrost landscape include 114 ancient beach ridges formed over about 6,000 years, creating an unusually clear record of shifting shorelines. Those ridges and nearby sites also preserve more than 9,000 years of human habitation, including about 5,000 years of Inupiat occupation, with remains ranging from campsites and hearths to tools, pottery, and houses. The area is valued both as a major archaeological archive and as a living cultural landscape where local subsistence hunting continues.

Noatak, Alaska · United States