Point Hope, Alaska
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Point Hope Tikiġaq |
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|---|---|
| City | |
 Point Hope
|
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| Coordinates: 68°20′49″N 166°45′47″W / 68.34694°N 166.76306°WCoordinates: 68°20′49″N 166°45′47″W / 68.34694°N 166.76306°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Alaska |
| Borough | North Slope |
| Incorporated | January 5, 1966 |
| Government | |
| • Mayor | Jack Schaefer |
| • State senator | Donny Olson (D) |
| • State rep. | Dean Westlake (D) |
| Area | |
| • Total | 6.4 sq mi (16.6 km2) |
| • Land | 6.3 sq mi (16.4 km2) |
| • Water | 0.1 sq mi (0.2 km2) |
| Elevation | 7 ft (2 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 674 |
| • Density | 110/sq mi (41/km2) |
| Time zone | Alaska (AKST) (UTC-9) |
| • Summer (DST) | AKDT (UTC-8) |
| ZIP code | 99766 |
| Area code | 907 |
| FIPS code | 02-61630 |
Point Hope (Inupiaq: Tikiġaq) is a city in North Slope Borough, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 674.
Before any modern settlement, the Ipiutak lived here.
The descriptive Inuit name of the place, "Tikarakh" or "Tikigaq", commonly spelled "Tiagara", means "forefinger". It was recorded as "Tiekagagmiut" in 1861 by P. Tikhmeniev Wich of the Russian Hydrographic Department and on Russian Chart 1495 it became "Tiekaga". This ancient village site was advantageous, because the protrusion of Point Hope into the sea brought the whales close to the shore. At Tikigaq, they built semi-subterranean houses using mainly whalebone and driftwood. Point Hope is one of the oldest continually occupied sites in North America. While some of the earlier dwellings have been lost to erosion as the point shrinks, it still provides a welter of valuable information to archaeologists on how early Eskimos survived in their harsh environment. The Tikigaq site is "by far the most extensive and complete one-period site yet discovered and described in the entire circumpolar region." - Helge Larsen.
The first recorded Europeans to sight this cape were Russian explorers Mikhail Vasiliev and Gleb Shishmaryov of the Imperial Russian Navy on the ships Otkrietie and Blagonamierennie. Vasiliev and Shishmaryov named this landhead Mys Golovnina, after Vice Admiral Vasily Golovnin (1776–1831).
The cape at Point Hope was renamed by Captain Frederick William Beechey of the Royal Navy, who wrote on August 2, 1826: "I named it Point Hope in compliment to Sir William Johnstone Hope". According to Archdeacon Stuck Hope was from a "well-known house long connected with the sea".
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