Amchitka Island

Amchitka Island lies in the Rat Islands of the Aleutian chain, between the Bering Sea and the Pacific. The island runs about 42 miles from northwest to southeast and covers roughly 116 square miles. A mountainous centre narrows into an eastern plateau with ponds and low rolling ground. Mosses, lichens, sedges and crowberry cover much of the eastern half, while the western end is barren. Fog, cloud and frequent storms define the surrounding sea.

The island formed part of a volcanic arc in one of the world’s most tectonically unstable settings. Aleut communities lived there for more than two and a half thousand years, drawing on marine animals, birds and the marine life of the shore. Their settlements formed part of a wider network of kayak routes and seasonal camps across the Aleutians.

By 1832 the island no longer had a permanent population. Russian fur traders and the pressures of maritime commerce had transformed the regional economy in the preceding decades, drawing Aleut labor and settlement toward new centres. Amchitka entered the following century remembered for its long indigenous occupation and for a rugged island whose coasts, storms and isolation had shaped every route to it. The surrounding reefs and kelp beds added shellfish and sea plants to the seasonal round.