St. Lawrence Island
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St. Lawrence Island is located west of Alaska in the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Strait, at about 64° North 170° 28' West. It is part of Alaska.
AKMap-doton-Savonga.PNG
Location of Savoonga, Alaska
The island is about 145 km (90 miles) long and 13–36 km (8-22 miles) wide. The island is treeless.
The island was called Sivuqaq by the Yupik who lived there. The island was visited by Russian/Danish explorer Vitus Bering on St. Lawrence’s Day, 1728, and named after the day of his visit.
There were about 4,000 Central Alaskan Yupik and Siberian Yupik living in several villages on the island in the mid 1800s. They subsisted by hunting walrus and whale and by fishing. A famine in 1878-1880 caused many to starve and many others to leave, decimating the island's population. Nearly all the residents remaining were Siberian Yupik.
Reindeer were introduced on the island in 1900 in an attempt to bolster the economy. The reindeer herd grew to about 10,000 animals by 1917.
The island presently contains two towns: Savoonga and Gambell. The two towns were given title to most of the land on St. Lawrence Island by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971.
The island is now inhabited mostly by Siberian Yupik engaged in hunting, fishing, marine mammal hunting and reindeer herding.