Kaltag Portage
Coordinates: 64 ° 6 ′ N , 159 ° 33 ′ W
The approximately 145 km long land connection between the Yukon River and Norton Sound in western Alaska is called Kaltag Portage or Unalakleet-Kaltag Portage .
The path connects the villages of Kaltag on the Yukon with Unalakleet on the coast. It runs in a south-westerly direction through the Nulato Hills along the Unalakleet and Kaltag rivers . The portage has been used as a trade route by the indigenous people of Alaska since prehistoric times . The Indians from the Athabaskan tribe from the interior and the Inupiat living on the coast exchanged their goods on this route. In the 1830s the Russian-American Company set up a trading post in Unalakleet. The Iditarod Trail from Seward to Nome passes the Kaltag Portage. A dog sled relay as a result of a diphtheria epidemic in Nome in 1925 also used this stretch of the route.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The History of Unalakleet on explorenorth.com