Anchorage Daily News

POINT LAY

POPULATION: 250 (2007)

LOCATION: South of the Kokolik River mouth, about 300 miles southwest of Barrow in northwest Alaska.

DESCRIPTION: A traditional Inupiat Eskimo village where nearly 90 percent of the population is wholly or partly Alaska Native. Point Lay is relatively isolated, the smallest village in the region. Residents depend heavily on subsistence activities for food staples, which include seal, walrus, caribou and fish. Most year-round jobs are with the North Slope Borough government. There is one school, attended by about 90 students.

HISTORY: Point Lay is one of the more recently established Inupiaq villages on the Arctic coast and has historically been occupied year-round by a small group of one or two families. They were joined in 1929-'30 by several more families from Point Hope. The deeply indented shoreline has prevented effective bowhead whaling, but the village participates in beluga whaling. In 1974, the village moved from the old site on a gravel barrier island just offshore, which is now used as a summer hunting camp. In the late 1970s, the village relocated again to a site near the Air Force Distance Early Warning station to the south, due to seasonal flooding from the Kokolik River.

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