49 Fun Facts About Kobuk Valley National Park

Kobuk Valley National Park lies about 25 miles north of what line?

The park sits about 25 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the latitude beyond which the sun stays above the horizon for at least one full day each summer.

What surprising feature was the park created in 1980 to preserve, along with caribou migration routes?

The Great Kobuk Sand Dunes are the largest active Arctic dune field in North America.

How tall are the Great Kobuk Dunes?

The Great Kobuk Dunes rise about 100 feet and spread over roughly 25 square miles on the south side of the Kobuk River.

NASA has funded study of the Great Kobuk Dunes as an analog for what?

NASA funded fieldwork treating the Great Kobuk Dunes as an analog for polar sand seas on Mars: both are cold dune fields shaped by wind, snow and frost.

About how much area do the park's three active dune fields cover?

The park's three active dune fields together cover about 20,500 acres of bare sand, a remnant of a far larger field left by Pleistocene glacial outwash.

Where does the caribou herd spend the summer calving season?

The herd calves each summer north of the Baird Mountains, well beyond the park, and winters far to the south, so it crosses the Kobuk River twice a year.

How big is Kobuk Valley National Park?

About 81,000 acres inside it belong to Native corporations and the state, and a large tract south of the river is designated wilderness.

How many designated trails and roads does the park have?

Visitors bring all their own gear for backcountry travel and arrive by chartered air taxi from Nome, Bettles or the headquarters town.

Which town roughly 100 miles west of the park hosts its headquarters?

Kotzebue, a town of about 3,000 on Kotzebue Sound off the Chukchi Sea, holds the park headquarters, and charter flights into the park leave from its airport.

Kobuk Valley is managed with which two other units as the Western Arctic National Parklands?

Cape Krusenstern National Monument and Noatak National Preserve share one superintendent and headquarters with Kobuk Valley; the three are run as the Western Arctic National Parklands.

Which national park and preserve lies 32 miles east of Kobuk Valley?

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, which spans the central Brooks Range, is Kobuk Valley's nearest national park neighbor to the east.

Which Kobuk River tributary inside the park is a designated National Wild River?

The Salmon River, which flows south into the Kobuk inside the park, was designated a National Wild River in 1980, one of the ANILCA additions to the system.

The park's northern range is named after Spencer Baird, secretary of which institution?

Spencer Fullerton Baird served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1878 until his death in 1887; the park's northern range was named in his honor.

Which shorter range forms the southern rim of the Kobuk Valley?

The Waring Mountains, a low range south of the Kobuk River, form the park's southern boundary, closing the valley against the higher range to the north.

The park's stretch of the Kobuk River runs between which two villages?

Kiana lies just downstream of the park and Ambler just upstream; the Kobuk between those two villages is the river's stretch inside Kobuk Valley National Park.

What does the Kobuk's Native name, Kuuvak, mean?

Kuuvak means 'great water' or 'big river'; the name was first recorded as Kowuk in 1850, and an 1880s Navy expedition briefly renamed the river the Putnam.

Roughly how long is the Kobuk River?

The Kobuk runs about 280 miles from the central Brooks Range westward to the Chukchi Sea coast, draining much of northwest Alaska's interior.

Which large predatory whitefish, prized in the Kobuk, spawns in the river's upper reaches each autumn?

Sheefish, or inconnu, are big predatory whitefish that can top 50 pounds; Kobuk River sheefish run upstream to spawn in the upper river each autumn.

Human habitation in the Kobuk Valley is believed to go back at least how long?

Archaeological finds put people in the Kobuk Valley at least 12,500 years ago, Paleo-Arctic hunters who took caribou at the river crossings; the valley was abandoned and resettled several times.

What is the National Historic Landmark archaeological site at a major caribou crossing on the Kobuk?

Onion Portage, named for the wild chives growing there, sits where caribou have crossed the Kobuk for millennia; its deep stratified layers anchor the cultural chronology of the Arctic.

What is the oldest cultural complex identified at the park's famous archaeological site?

Akmak, a Paleo-Arctic complex of large blades and microblades, is the oldest complex in the site's deep layers, lying below the Kobuk, Palisades and later occupations.

Which pioneering Arctic archaeologist discovered the park's deeply stratified site on the Kobuk?

J. Louis Giddings found the site in the early 1940s while pioneering tree-ring dating along the Kobuk, then excavated it in the 1960s; his cabin there is preserved by the Park Service.

Which Native regional group holds the park's famous archaeological site as an inholding?

NANA Regional Corporation, the Native corporation for northwest Alaska, owns the archaeological site as an inholding within the park under its ANCSA land selections.

Which Native people live in the Kobuk valley, subsisting on its caribou and fish?

The Inupiat, the Inuit people of northern and northwestern Alaska, have long hunted caribou and fished the Kobuk; their villages line the river just outside the park boundary.

Archaeologists assign the people who reached the valley 4,000 years ago to which tradition?

The Arctic Small Tool tradition, known at the site as the Denbigh Flint complex, is marked by tiny, finely flaked microblades and burins and appears in the layers around 2200 BC.

What did Native people tell the roughly 2,000 prospectors who arrived for the 1898 Kobuk River Stampede?

Local people warned the 1898 stampeders that the gold reports were a scam; only about 800 went on upriver, found little or nothing, and most left within two seasons.

Which green stone, Alaska's state gem, is quarried in the upper Kobuk valley?

Jade, the nephrite of the Jade Mountains near Shungnak upstream of the park, has been quarried and traded by Kobuk valley people for centuries and became Alaska's state gem in 1968.

Which president first protected Kobuk Valley as a national monument on December 1, 1978?

Jimmy Carter proclaimed Kobuk Valley a national monument under the Antiquities Act on December 1, 1978, while the Alaska lands bill was stuck in Congress; ANILCA made it a park on December 2, 1980.

Since Kobuk Valley has no national preserve, which hunting is allowed there?

Only local subsistence take is allowed: ANILCA lets rural residents hunt and fish for subsistence in Alaska national parks, while sport hunting is permitted only in national preserves, which Kobuk Valley lacks.

Which salmon species dominates the Kobuk River's subsistence and commercial fishery?

Chum salmon, also called dog salmon, run up the Kobuk in July and August and supply both the regional commercial fishery and the villages' subsistence drying racks.

Between which dates does the sun never set over the park?

At the park's latitude the sun stays above the horizon from about June 3 to July 9, roughly five weeks centered on the June solstice.

Which conifer dominates the forests of the Kobuk Valley lowlands?

White spruce dominates the forests of the Kobuk lowlands, growing with paper birch and balsam poplar along the river, while the surrounding mountains rise above the treeline.

The park lies in the transition zone between which two ecosystems?

Kobuk Valley straddles the transition between boreal forest and tundra: spruce forest fills the lowlands near the northern tree limit, while the ranges above are treeless Arctic tundra.

Which two seasonal ranger stations does the park operate along the Kobuk River?

The Kallarichuk station at the park's west end and the Onion Portage station at its east end are staffed only in summer; no rangers live inside the park year-round.

The headquarters town is named for an 1816 Northwest Passage seeker of which nationality?

The town's namesake, a Baltic German officer in Russian service, entered the sound that now bears his name in August 1816 aboard the brig Rurik while seeking the Northwest Passage.

The park's headquarters town sits on a spit at the tip of which peninsula?

The town sits on a gravel spit at the northwest tip of the Baldwin Peninsula, a long arm of land that separates the inner and outer parts of the sound.

Which Navy lieutenant explored the Kobuk in 1883-86 and proposed renaming it Putnam?

George M. Stoney led Navy expeditions up the Kobuk in 1883-86, wintering at Fort Cosmos, and tried to rename the river after Lt. Charles Putnam, who had been lost on the Arctic ice.

How many villages lie along the Kobuk River?

Five villages line the Kobuk: one on the delta, one just below the park, and three upstream of it; all five lie outside the park boundary.

How large is the Kobuk Valley Wilderness south of the river?

The Kobuk Valley Wilderness covers 174,545 acres south of the river, designated by ANILCA in 1980; the Selawik Wilderness continues beyond the park's southern boundary.

Kobuk Valley is one of how many national parks in Alaska?

Alaska has eight national parks, from Kobuk Valley in the northwest to Glacier Bay in the southeast; only California has more.

Under the Köppen system, what climate type does the park have?

Subarctic (Köppen Dfc): the coldest month averages below freezing while one to three months average above 10 °C, and snow can fall in any month of the year.

Besides Bettles and the headquarters town, which Seward Peninsula town has air taxis to the park?

Nome, on the Seward Peninsula's Norton Sound coast, is one of three towns with air-taxi service into the park; flights run year-round but depend on the weather.

What is the name of the building that serves as the park's headquarters?

The Northwest Arctic Heritage Center in the headquarters town holds the park's offices and exhibits and serves as the shared visitor center for all three Western Arctic National Parklands units.

Which body of water is commonly, but wrongly, assumed to be the source of the Kobuk River?

The true headwaters lie further east in the Endicott Mountains, and the river then drops through the Upper and Lower Kobuk canyons.

For roughly how long is the sun visible in the park on the winter solstice?

On the winter solstice the sun clears the horizon for only about 1.5 hours at the park's latitude, though long twilights pad either side and the aurora is a regular winter sight.

The Kobuk River empties into which arm of Kotzebue Sound?

The Kobuk's delta spills into Hotham Inlet, the sound's long eastern arm, which also receives the Selawik River from the south.

Oxytropis kobukensis, the pink Kobuk locoweed of the dunes, belongs to which plant family?

The Kobuk locoweed belongs to the pea family, Fabaceae, like all Oxytropis species; its pink blossoms have the classic keeled pea-flower shape.

The Great Kobuk and Little Kobuk dune fields are joined by a third named after which waterway?

The Hunt River Dunes, named for the nearby river, join the Great Kobuk and Little Kobuk fields; all three lie south of the river as remnants of far larger post-glacial dune fields.

Just after the Pleistocene glaciers retreated, the valley's dune fields covered up to how much?

Right after the Pleistocene ice retreated, dune sand covered as much as 200,000 acres of the valley; vegetation has since crept over most of it, leaving only the three active fields.