Kodiak Island
Alaska’s Emerald Isle and home of the Kodiak brown bear
The second-largest island in the United States, Kodiak covers about 3,595 square miles (9,311 km²) in the Gulf of Alaska, and roughly two thirds of it belongs to the Kodiak brown bear. The Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1941 and now spanning about 1.9 million acres across the archipelago, protects these bears, among the largest bears on Earth, along with the salmon runs that feed them. The island's green, fjord-cut mountains, rising to 4,469 feet (1,362 m) at Koniag Peak, earned it the nickname the Emerald Isle.
The Alutiiq, or Sugpiaq, people have lived here for at least 7,500 years and call the island Qikertaq. Russian fur traders under Grigory Shelikhov founded a settlement at Three Saints Bay in 1784, the first permanent Russian colony in Alaska, and moved it to the site of the city of Kodiak in 1792. In 1964 the Good Friday earthquake sent a tsunami that destroyed much of the waterfront. Today the 13,101 islanders counted in 2020 support one of the nation's busiest fishing ports and the largest Coast Guard base in the country.