School children and travelers for years have found Barrow on the map of North America and chosen it as a destination for pen pal letters for a vacation adventure.  It is the town at the top of the world…the northernmost community on the North American continent.  Barrow became the ‘county seat’ of the North Slope Borough when the borough was formed in 1972, shortly after the passage of the Alaska Native claims Settlement Act.  It presently serves as a hub for transportation, regional government administration, communications economic development and education in the region.  However, the current history of Barrow must be measured against the archeological history.  The town contains, among several others, the Birnik site with house mounds and artifacts that date from a period more than 1,200 years ago.  The proper and traditional name for this community is Ukpiagivik (‘place for hunting owls’) but a British sailing officer names Beechey on a surveying expedition in 1825-26 named the place after Sir John Barrow of the British admiralty and name on the subsequently printed maps prevailed.

A few miles to the northeast lies a low peninsula, the geographic Point Barrow, which marks the meeting point of the Chukchi Sea on the west and the Beaufort Sea to the east, both part of the Arctic Ocean.  In addition to centuries of the coming and going of the Native hunters and travelers, the point has seen the passage of other explorers, sailing ships of the nineteenth century commercial whalers, trader, solo adventurers, and, more recently, the huge barges transporting equipment modules to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields to the east of Barrow.

The population of Barrow has increased in recent years with the business and local government activities generated by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the Borough.  It stands at about 4,469 residents today with a sixty percent portion of Iñupiat (Eskimo) citizens.  Despite its remote location the community has several other national groups.  The North Slope Borough employs just under fifty percent of the approximate 2,300 person workforce; the School District nearly fourteen percent and the remaining one-third of Barrow’s employed work for private business and industry.

The community is served by daily passenger jet flights and several regional air carriers.  Cable television and local dial-up Internet service, public radio on both AM and FM bands, two cellular telephone providers, a local telephone service company, two facilities based long distance companies, and several long-distance resellers; all combine to make the Barrow community accessible to and from the rest of the world and the public switched telecommunications network.  The Borough’s community teleconference network operation center is in Barrow while the North Slope Borough public safety divisions (Police, Fire, Search and Rescue) operate an extensive radio-telephone network with links to the other Borough communities.  The Borough leases a long-distance network with links to the other Borough communities.  The Borough leases a long-distance network to support distance education and governmental service administration in the villages.