Fort Yukon

At the most northern reach of the Yukon River, 145 miles northeast of Fairbanks, lays Fort Yukon, Alaska’s largest Athabascan village, which serves as a staging area for outfitters and guiding companies who run trips in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the north. Its main attraction to visitors, however, is the Arctic Circle, the imaginary line that lies only a mile to the south of the village. Flightseeing tours out of Fairbanks take visitors for a flight across the Arctic Circle and then land in Fort Yukon for a tour of the community and to see the town’s historic Episcopal Church that was built in 1899.

This remote Gwich’in village of 587 residents is not accessible by road or water when the Yukon freezes up from end of September to late May. The winters in Fort Yukon are dry and cold with while the summers are dry and hot. In winter Fort Yukon’s location above the Arctic Circle and the wide-open terrain that surrounds it make the village an exceptional place to witness the aurora borealis. Fort Yukon offers visitors food, fuel and lodging.

Fort Yukon is also one of the older settlements in Alaska, founded in 1847 as a Hudson Bay Company outpost for British use of the rich furbearing resources of the area. The British trading company operated the trading post until 1869, attracting so many Alaska Native families that in 1862 a mission school was established. Two years after the United States purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867 it was determined that Fort Yukon was on American soil and the Hudson’s Bay Company was forced to relocate to Canadian soil. By the 1920s, Fort Yukon was the most important fur center in Alaska, and to this day fur trading remains the livelihood of most residents.