I was at the OLDEST VILLAGE IN North America today.

Point Hope, AK is the oldest functioning village in North America.  I went to the old village which was abandoned in 1970 but it had been inhabited for 2000 years.  There were two other villages before but they are under water at this time.

At the village, I saw a house underground which has whale bones instead of wood to hold up the sod.  A little village lady lived there until 1975.  This area has a place where they did the blanket throw for hundreds and thousands of hears.  It has old whale bones outlining the area where the toss occurred.  A couple of the presenters lived there and did the blanket toss there in their youth.  Even today, the have 2 feasts (whaling) at this location and still do the blanket toss.  

This is also a place where people have dug into mounds of dirt and they store Whale meat and seal meat.  They opened up one and there was ice at the bottom.  Caribou does not store well there.  The mud and sod houses were the original houses and then the moved in wood structures.  Many of the wood houses came from White folks who set up shop to trade with the natives.  After they left, they moved the houses onto this location.  There was also a military base during the Korea war and when the military left, the moved the buildings as well. 

The old movie theater was an old military structure.  They paid 25 cents to watch a movie.  They got paid 25 cents for little critters like lemmings, then they would sell the lemming and use the money to go to the movie.

It was also a beautiful day with blue skies.  We had to end our field trip because a plane was coming in and we were parked on the runway.  

I also saw a graveyard which had whale bones for the fence.  It is the original graveyard.  I hope to go wander there one of these days.