At the far western end of the Arctic Slope region, 248 air miles southwest of Barrow, lies one of the longest, continuously occupied community sites in North America.  Archeologists have for years intensively investigated the sequence of occupied sites related to the changing beachfronts of the Point Hope peninsula.  Several thousand years of continuous use of occupancy have been well established.  Despite being the largest of the North Slope villages outside of Barrow, Point Hope residents maintain an active subsistence life-style.  In addition to the inland and coastal fish, animals and birds that are harvested, Point Hope is also a traditional whaling community and first village to seek the bowhead whales as they round the point and enter the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas on their annual, spring migration north and east into the Arctic Ocean.

Visitors today can walk through areas adjacent to the modern village that contain remains of sod-houses, house-pits, and other artifacts of the earlier occupants.  The present community site, following the recent move from the ocean storm threatened location further out on the triangular peninsula, is an active community with modern public facilities.  The infrastructure of Point Hope includes and elementary and high school complex, power generation plant, water and sewage treatment facilities, a public health clinic, fire station/search & rescue base, police station, a geodesic dome ‘kalgi’ or community center, community teleconference center, Laundromat, post office, a general store, and a small hotel with a café and bakery.

The current (1998) population of Point Hope totals approximately 750 people and about ninety-one percent are Iñupiat (Eskimos).  With about 360 people in the village workforce, the North Slope Borough and North Slope Borough School District are the principal employers.  Forty-two percent of the workforce is involved in production of electricity, water and sewage treatment, and maintenance of roads and public facilities.  In addition, local residents are employed to provide, health, education, public safety, and administrative services.  The Tigara Corporation and its subsidiary or affiliated companies is another major employer in the community with thirty-three percent of the workforce.  Point Hope is well know throughout Alaska and elsewhere for the quality and variety of its traditional craft products made from ivory, baleen, whalebone, furs and other natural resources.  As noted above the subsistence hunting, fishing and whaling activities remain a significant component of the local household and community economy.

The telecommunications facilities serving Point Hope include a fully digital local exchange telephone service, local dial-up Internet, widely-used citizens band (CB) radio, cable-TV, KBRW public radio broadcast, and the community-access public teleconferencing center.  Interconnection with the public, switched telecommunications network is via satellite circuits which currently present limitations to the residents needing access to higher bandwidth services, especially the Internet.  The North Slope Borough, in coordination with the NSB School District, leases private satellite circuits and maintains a ‘long-distance’ network in order to provide distance education, tele-health and support for governmental service administration in the community.  Physical transportation, as is the case in the other North Slope villages, is provided by scheduled and chartered aircraft.  These flights are from Barrow and Kotzebue.