Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
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Bering Land Bridge National Preserve | |
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IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) | |
Location: | Seward Peninsula, Alaska, USA |
Nearest city: | Kotzebue, Alaska |
Area: | 2,698,919 acres (10,922 kmĀ²) |
Established: | December 1, 1978 |
Visitation: | 2,428 (in 2005) |
Governing body: | National Park Service |
The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve on the Alaskan coastline is one of the most remote United States national park areas, located on the Seward Peninsula. The National Preserve protects a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia with North America more than 13,000 years ago during the Pleistocene ice age. The majority of this land bridge, once thousands of miles wide, now lies beneath the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas.
During the glacial epoch this was part of a migration route for people, animals, and plants whenever ocean levels fell enough to expose the land bridge. Archeologists agree that it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first migrated from Asia to populate the Americas (see Models of migration to the New World).
The preserve was originally established on December 1, 1978 as Bering Land Bridge National Monument. On December 2, 1980 the designation was changed to a National Preserve. The Preserve's western boundary lies 42 miles from the Bering Strait and the fishing boundary between the United States and Russia. There are no roads into the preserve. Access to the preserve is by bush planes or boats during summer months and by ski planes or dog sleds during the winter.