Yes. Anaktuvuk Pass, a Nunamiut Iñupiat village of roughly 300 people, sits inside the park boundary in the central Brooks Range. It’s the only permanent settlement within Gates of the Arctic National Park. Beyond Anaktuvuk Pass, there are also private cabins, Native allotments, and inholdings scattered through the park, plus subsistence users who travel through it from surrounding villages.
Anaktuvuk Pass
Anaktuvuk Pass is one of the more unusual settlements in any U.S. national park. The Nunamiut, the inland Iñupiat caribou hunters of the Brooks Range, settled in the pass in the late 1940s. When the park was established in 1980 under ANILCA, the village’s existence was preserved within the park boundary. Today the community is around 300 people, has a school, an airstrip, and is reached only by air.
Subsistence hunting of caribou, especially from the Western Arctic and Central Arctic herds, remains central to life there.
Cabins and inholdings
Gates of the Arctic was designated under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which preserved existing land uses. That means there are private cabins and Native allotments inside the park. Some are used by descendants of the original allottees for subsistence and traditional activities. Others belong to long-time residents of the region.
These aren’t tourist cabins or rentals. They’re privately owned and not open to visitors.
Subsistence use from surrounding villages
People from villages outside the park, including Bettles, Allakaket, Alatna, Wiseman, Coldfoot, Ambler, Kobuk, and others, regularly travel into Gates for hunting, fishing, and traditional activities. Subsistence use is allowed under ANILCA throughout the park’s preserve areas and parts of the park itself. The NPS subsistence overview for Gates of the Arctic has the regulatory detail.
What this means for visitors
Visitors don’t need to worry about wandering through inhabited areas. Anaktuvuk Pass is a small footprint and most park visitors fly over it rather than landing there.
Two of our guides, Rhane and Rachel, have flown into Anaktuvuk and walked east from there to the Koyukuk River, then packrafted down to Bettles. Early June trip, both backpacked and packrafted. They didn’t talk much with anyone from the village; they got in and got moving. There’s an ATV trail heading out of Anaktuvuk that parties sometimes arrange a ride on, just to skip the first stretch of slow walking out of town. Worth knowing if you’re starting a route from the village.
On backcountry inholdings: leave them alone
We’ve come across private cabins and inholdings in the park a handful of times. Our policy is to give them a wide berth.
The simple reason is that they’re private property and the people who own them aren’t looking for visitors. Don’t camp near them, don’t go inside, don’t poke around.
The less obvious reason is liability. If someone breaks into a cabin or steals something later in the season, you don’t want to have been the party that left footprints in the area. Best practice is to plan a route that doesn’t pass close to any known inholding, and if you do come across one, keep moving and don’t stop nearby.
