Kotzebue, Alaska

Kotzebue or Qikiqtaġruk  is a city in the Northwest Arctic Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the borough's seat, by far its largest community and the economic and transportation hub of the subregion of Alaska encompassing the borough. The population of the city was 3,102 as of the 2020 census, down from 3,201 in 2010.

Etymology and prehistory
Owing to its location and relative size, Kotzebue served as a trading and gathering center for the various communities in the region. The Noatak, Selawik and Kobuk Rivers drain into the Kotzebue Sound near Kotzebue to form a center for transportation to points inland. In addition to people from interior villages, inhabitants of far-eastern Asia, now the Russian Far East, came to trade at Kotzebue. Furs, seal-oil, hides, rifles, ammunition, and seal skins were some of the items traded. People also gathered for competitions like the current World Eskimo Indian Olympics. With the arrival of the whalers, traders, gold seekers, and missionaries the trading center expanded.

Kotzebue is also known as Qikiqtaġruk, which means "small island" or "resembles an island" in the Iñupiaq language. In the words of the late Iñupiaq elder Blanche Qapuk Lincoln of Kotzebue: "Iḷiḷgaaŋukapta tamarra pamna imiqaqtuq. Taavaasii kuuqahuni taiñña Adams-kutlu Ipaaluk-kutlu, taapkuak piagun tavra. Taiñña suli Katyauratkutlu, Lena Norton tupqata piagun tavra kuuk suli taugani...Manna uvva qikiqtaq, Qikiqtaġruŋmik tavra atiqautiginiġaa qikiqtaupluni. Nunałhaiñġuqtuq marra pakma. ('When we were children there was water behind front street and a slough between the Ipalooks and Adams'. There was another slough over between Coppocks and Lena Norton's house...The island on Front Street led to Kotzebue being called Qikiqtaġruk because island in Iñupiaq is called qikiqtaq.')."

Kotzebue gets its name from the Kotzebue Sound, which was named after Otto von Kotzebue, a Baltic German who explored the sound while searching for the Northwest Passage in the service of Russia in 1818.

19th century
A United States post office was established in 1899.

20th century
In 1958, Kotzebue Air Force Station was completed. The radar site would be operated by on-site personnel until its deactivation in 1983 and the subsequent demolition of most of the station's structures. The radome continues to operate, but is now mostly unattended.

During 1990, the German drama film Salmonberries starring k.d. lang was mostly shot in Kotzebue.

In 1997, three 66-kw wind turbines were installed in Kotzebue, creating the northernmost wind farm in the United States. Today, the wind farm consists of 19 turbines, including two 900 kW EWT turbines. The total installed capacity has reached 3-MW, displacing approximately 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel every year.

21st century
On September 2, 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech on global warming in Kotzebue, becoming the first sitting president to visit a site north of the Arctic Circle.

Since 2016, the United States Coast Guard has deployed MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters to Kotzebue from the beginning of July to the end of October as part of Operation Arctic Shield.

In 2017, the city received an All-America City award from the National Civic League.

On December 3, 2018, Mike Dunleavy was sworn in as the 12th governor of Alaska in Kotzebue's high school gymnasium after inclement weather thwarted his plan to hold the ceremony in Noorvik.

In November 2023, ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News released an investigative report of domestic abuse and potential murders in Kotzebue involving six indigenous women who had dated Mayor Clement Richards Sr's three sons, resulting in a total of 16 charges that were ultimately dismissed by local prosecutors or received minimum sentences by local judicial magistrates. While a state medical examiner stated for one of the women that there were "signs of strangulation", the local police eventually closed the case as suicide. In January 2024, the police released a statement saying they would not be re-opening the case, with their timeline of events in the statement contradicting events that occurred just after the woman's death. The city police said the other case of strangulation on the Mayor's property was referred to state investigators, though the Alaska Department of Public Safety said no such case was ever given to them.

Geography
Kotzebue lies on a gravel spit at the end of the Baldwin Peninsula in the Kotzebue Sound. It is located at 66.89722°N, -162.58556°W (66.897192, −162.585444), approximately 30 mi from Noatak, Kiana, and other nearby smaller communities. It is 33 mi north of the Arctic Circle on Alaska's western coast.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 28.7 sqmi, of which 27.0 sqmi is land, and 1.6 sqmi, or 5.76%, is water.

Kotzebue is home to the NANA Regional Corporation, one of thirteen Alaska Native Regional Corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) in settlement of Alaska Native land claims.

Kotzebue is a gateway to Kobuk Valley National Park and other natural attractions of northern Alaska. The Northwest Arctic Heritage Center, operated by the National Park Service, serves as a community meeting space and visitor center to Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument. Nearby Selawik National Wildlife Refuge also maintains office space in the town.

Climate
Kotzebue has a dry subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc), with long, somewhat snowy, and very cold winters, and short, mild summers; diurnal temperature variation is low to minimal throughout the year, with an annual normal of 11.6 F-change and a minimum normal of 8.0 F-change in October. Monthly daily average temperatures range from −1.9 °F in January to 55.3 °F in July, with an annual mean of 24.0 °F. Days with the maximum reaching at or above 70 °F can be expected an average of six days per summer. Precipitation is both most frequent and greatest during the summer months with August the wettest month averaging 2.13 in. Kotzebue average precipitation is 11.36 in per year. Snowfall averages about 64.2 in a season (July through June of the next year). Extreme temperatures have ranged from −58 °F on March 16, 1930, to 85 °F as recently as June 19, 2013. The coldest has been January 1934 with a mean temperature of −27.3 F, while the warmest month was July 2009 at 60.0 F; the annual mean temperature has ranged from 16.5 F in 1964 to 29.7 F in 2016.


 * Notes:

Demographics
Kotzebue first appeared on the 1880 U.S. Census under its predecessor unincorporated Inuit village named "Kikiktagamute." It did not appear again until 1910, then as Kotzebue. It formally incorporated in 1958.

As of the census of 2000, there were 3,082 people, 889 households, and 656 families residing in the city. The population density was 114.1 PD/sqmi. There were 1,007 housing units at an average density of 37.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 71.2% American Indian, 19.5% White, 1.8% Asian, 0.3% Black or African American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.8% from other races, and 6.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.2% of the population.

There were 889 households, out of which 50.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.1% were married couples living together, 17.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.1% were non-families. 19.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 2.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.40 and the average family size was 3.93.

In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 39.8% under the age of 18, 8.5% from 18 to 24, 30.4% from 25 to 44, 17.2% from 45 to 64, and 4.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 26 years. For every 100 females, there were 102.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 104.5 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $57,163, and the median income for a family was $58,068. Males had a median income of $42,604 versus $36,453 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,289. About 9.2% of families and 13.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.9% of those under age 18 and 6.0% of those age 65 or over.

Transportation
Kotzebue's Ralph Wien Memorial Airport is the one airport in the Northwest Arctic Borough with regularly scheduled large commercial passenger aircraft service to and from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and the Nome Airport.

Health care
Kotzebue is home to the Maniilaq Association, a tribally-operated health and social services organization named after Maniilaq and part of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Maniilaq Health Center is the primary health care facility for the residents of the Northwest Arctic Borough. The facility houses an emergency room with local and medevac support for accident/trauma victims, as well as an ambulatory care clinic, dental and eye care clinics, a pharmacy, a specialty clinic, and an inpatient wing with 17 beds for recovering patients.

Health care providers at Maniilaq Health Center provide telemedicine support to Community Health Aides (CHAPs) in the outlying villages of the Northwest Arctic Borough. The CHAPs, who work in village-based clinics, are trained in basic health assessment and can treat common illnesses. For more complicated cases, the CHAPs communicate with Maniilaq Health Center medical staff via phone, video-conference, and digital images.

Media
The Arctic Sounder is a weekly newspaper published by Alaska Media, LLC, which covers Kotzebue and the rest of the Northwest Arctic Borough along with the North Slope Borough (and its hub community of Utqiagvik).

KOTZ, broadcasting at 720 on the AM dial, is the public radio station serving Kotzebue, one of two Class A clear-channel stations in the United States at that frequency (the other being Chicago's WGN). KOTZ operates an extensive translator network serving the rest of the borough.

Education
Northwest Arctic Borough School District operates two schools in Kotzebue: June Nelson Elementary School (JNES) and Kotzebue Middle High School (KMHS). they had 394 and 309 students, making them the largest schools in the district.

There is one private school run by the Native Village of Kotzebue called Nikaitchuat Iḷisaġviat. It is an Inupiaq language immersion school for grades PK through one.

University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) operates their Chukchi Campus which offers classes, a library and other community services.

Notable people

 * Willie Hensley (born 1941), former state Representative, former state Senator, one of key founders of NANA Regional Corporation, instrumental in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
 * Reggie Joule (born 1952), who represented Kotzebue and surrounding area in the Alaska House of Representatives for eight terms followed by a single term as borough mayor, achieved minor national fame during the 1970s and 1980s for his exploits in the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, including two appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
 * Seth Kantner, novelist
 * John Lincoln (born 1981), member of the Alaska House of Representatives
 * Segundo Llorente (1906–1989), Spanish-born Jesuit, philosopher, author and politician
 * Adam Stennett (born 1972), painter
 * John Baker (c. 1962), winner of the 2011 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race

Toxins
Although no "toxic releases" come from within the bounds of Kotzebue, the methods used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s in their Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI) reports that in 2016, Kotzebue, with only 7,500 inhabitants, "produced" 756 million pounds of toxins.(Due to the way the EPA defines toxins, even the discharge of filtered and pH balanced water is called a toxin.) The TRI placed Kotzebue as the most toxic place in the United States. The second most toxic was Bingham Canyon, Utah at 200 million pounds of toxins. However, as National Geographic explains, the source of the toxins is not Kotzebue, but Alaska's Red Dog mine. Since the mine is located in a remote area in Alaska, the toxic release is linked to the nearest "city"— Kotzebue. The EPA says that when a "facility" is "not located in a city, town, village, or similar entity will often list a nearby city." National Geographic says that, "All 756 million pounds of toxic chemicals attributed to "Kotzebue" on the TRI dataset came from one of the world's largest zinc and lead mines, the Red Dog mine, which is located about 80 miles north of Kotzebue." At the county level the Northwest Arctic of Alaska leads the list with 756,000,000 pounds of toxins. The state of Alaska produces three times more toxins than every other American state—834 million pounds.