Welcome To Adak

We got to fly here on a big ol' Alaska Airlines jet made just for this flight--the front half of the plane reserved for cargo, the back half for passengers. There are two weekly flights to Adak, one Sunday and one Thursday (to put this in perspective, the electricity went out on the island last Thursday night, and we had to wait for a part to be flown in on Sunday to fix it).

We flew in from Anchorage on a clear day with a great view of the town and Mt. Adagdak in the distance. See all that housing? Only about 150 people live here, with housing enough for around 6,000.

At 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, Adak is the westernmost municipality in the US and the southernmost town in Alaska, and has coasts on the Bering Sea and the North Pacific.

The island is home to an abandoned military base used by Air Force, Army, and most recently, Navy during the Cold War. During WWII, there were over 100,000 people living on the island. In 1994 the base was downsized and lost most of its families (the school and family housing closed), and in 1997, the station officially closed, selling the facilities to the Aleut Corporation.