Why the Northernmost Town in America Exists

 3,500 miles from Washington, D.C., 3,000 miles north of Los Angeles, 750 miles north of Anchorage, where the ground never melts, where the snow falls mid-summer, where no plants taller than a few inches grow, where the sun sets for months in the winter and stays up for months in the summer, lies America’s northernmost town—Barrow, Alaska. Combing through maps, Barrow has always intrigued me and I had two questions—why does it exist and what is it like?—so I visited it. Now, asking why Barrow exists might seem like an absurd question. You could ask the same question for Fernley, Nevada or Grafton, Vermont or any other town but Barrow is a bit unique. It’s not a small town, at least by Arctic standards. Just as many people live in Barrow as in the entire rest of Northern Alaska. There is only one town on earth larger than and further north than Barrow (Tiksi, Russia) Considering Barrow is one of the northernmost communities in the world, the weather is far from typical. This clip from 1:45 AM on May 30th shows just how unique it is. Just hours before, it was 68 degrees in Los Angeles, 70 in Denver, 93 in D.C., and 96 in Dallas while Americans across the country were having their Memorial Day barbecues and here in Barrow, the sun still lit up the landscape and it billowed snow just before two in the morning. Snowy weather isn’t in the least bit unique in the weeks leading up to summer and even during June, July, and August, the ground regularly gets a light dusting. You can tell it’s the Arctic. For 65 days in the summer, the sun never sets, then for 65 again in the winter it never rises. On the ground, Barrow is… desolate. It’s bounded on one side by the flat Arctic tundra and the other by the often frozen Arctic Ocean. There’s little emphasis on aesthetics within the town itself but there are few sights as beautiful as the sea-ice just off of the beach. There’s not a single paved road in Barrow as they would be destroyed each year by the shifting land as it freezes and melts. In fact, there aren’t even roads connecting Barrow to the outside world—they end just a couple miles out of town. That does mean, though, that for all but a few months of the year there’s only one way in or out—the airplane. Barrow’s Airport is quite literally the lifeline of the community. The entire town relies on planes going in and out to get food in and people out. Somewhat surprisingly, multiple jet planes fly into Barrow each day from Anchorage. You could start your day in this small town above the Arctic Circle and finish in New York. With no roads or port, with little exception, every ounce of food flies into Barrow. There’s even a special type of aircraft built almost exclusively to serve small towns like Barrow—the 737-combi. These planes have their front half built like cargo planes and their back half built like passenger planes to serve communities that are small enough that they can’t demand full-size cargo airplanes and still need a way to bring passengers in and out. Increasingly nowadays, however, Barrow can be supplied by boat. For just a few months of the year, the ice breaks up enough that a barge can come to shore and bring all the goods to Barrow that won’t fit in a plane. That means that if you need a car or a truck or building materials, you have one shot a year to order it. As the mayor says: [Mayor] "Cost of living is very expensive here because a lot of the produce, products are very expensive, because they’re flown in. Air freight is very expensive.” Heavy things are incredibly expensive—$15 for this hand sanitizer and $30 for this stain remover. Products that need refrigeration in transport, such as frozen pizza, are also unnaturally expensive—$17 for this one. Bulky things demand a premium too—$20 for some toilet paper and $22 for diapers. The cost of living above the Arctic Circle in Barrow is just extremely high due to its location. In visiting such a foreign place, you do sometimes have to remind yourself that you’re still in the same country as Miami, Minneapolis, or Milwaukee. It’s a reminder of just how vast the United States is. Barrow still has a US Post Office, a Wells Fargo bank, those American-style signs—it’s still an American city even if it’s closer to Tokyo and St. Petersburg than it is to D.C. So why do people live in Barrow? Why have 5,000 people chosen to live their lives as close to the North Pole as to their own state capital? Well, for many residents, it’s been their home for thousands of years. Barrow is the cultural center of the Iñupiat tribe—one of the dozens of native Alaskan tribes. There’s evidence that the Iñupiat people have lived in the same spot as Barrow for more than 1,500 years making it one of the oldest permanently inhabited settlements in North America. That’s why over 60% of the residents of the city are Alaskan Native—mostly from the Iñupiat tribe. The answer to why the other 40% is there, as it often is, is oil. Barrow is the administrative center of the North Slope borough—the equivalent of a county or region. The area is larger than the entire United Kingdom, yet less than 10,000 people live within its borders. Barrow itself doesn’t have a significant amount of oil, but nearby Prudhoe Bay has the single largest oil deposit in North America. [Mayor] “The larger companies that have leases out on the Prudhoe Bay oil fields hire people to fill in positions that are needed within their services.” Some people go from Barrow to Prudhoe Bay to work the drills, but there’s also good work within Barrow as it serves as the home of the borough’s government. The primary employers in the area are the city, borough, state, and federal government. And, in fact, you can make some decent money in Barrow. The median household income is over $80,000 compared the US’ average of about $55,000. Of course, when spending $500 a week on groceries is normal, this number seems slightly less impressive, but the city does have real industry. That, of course, is a big reason why 5,000 people live here. It’s a completely self-sustaining city. It’s expensive, hugely expensive, to live here but those who do make that choice for a reason. Among American cities, Barrow sits center stage watching the world warm. -“I think we live through climate change on a daily basis. Climate change and global climate change has its effects on the North Slope and some see different effects over time as it occurs depending on the season. Mostly, you can see it in the fall and spring seasons in terms of the effects of climate change—the thawing, the warmer temperatures, movements of and migrations of animals occurring a little bit more earlier than what they were in the past. These are changes we’re contending with on a daily basis in the Arctic.” Day by day, the oil supplies in the North Slope Borough run out and the world is turning to renewable energy. The area has a looming threat of its biggest industry moving out. Many other places in a similar situation such as the UAE or Oman or Norway have attempted to fill the gap that oil will leave by growing the tourism industry. But, as Mayor Brower says, “It’s very seasonal. It's only from the spring to the fall—the majority of the tourist season that occurs. There’s some interest in developing tourist entrepreneurship into the communities but the infrastructure still lacking—a lack of hotels, a lack of transportation needs or tourism business items that are needed to conduct tourism, they’re not quite developed in a lot of our villages.” Visiting Barrow is an adventure, not a vacation, and nobody should come expecting a McDonald's, and Segway tours, and super-fast Wi-Fi. The beach of America’s northernmost town presents one of the rarest views in the world—thousands of miles of civilization-free ice, water, and nothingness. Alaska’s license plates may say that the state itself is America’s last frontier, but nowhere feels closer to the end of the Earth than Barrow, Alaska.