Leffingwell Camp Site

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Flaxman Iceland is a North Slope Borough to the administrative district, Alaska, owned island in the Beaufort Sea.

Geography

The elongated island lies immediately west of the Canning River Delta about three to four kilometers from the mainland of Alaska, from which it is separated by the Lion Bay. It has a typical tundra vegetation with numerous ponds. Boulders indicate a glacial past.

History

In August 1826, the British Arctic explorer John Franklin arrived on the island with 15 companions in two open boats. He named it after the sculptor John Flaxman.

1907 established the Anglo -American Polar Expedition, which was jointly organized by the Dane Ejnar Mikkelsen ( 1880-1971 ) and the American Ernest de Koven Leffingwell ( 1875-1971 ) led, on the island of a makeshift hut from the remains of their ship, the Duchess of Bedford, which had been crushed by the ice. Leffingwell took the property with some extensions until 1914 for his geological work in the region. It is now run as number 32 on the list of National Historic Landmarks in Alaska.

On March 15, began in 1918 on Flaxman Iceland the first experiment with a drift station. Marched on Vilhjálmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition Størker Storkerson (1883-1940) with four men and 17 sled dogs from the island coming 450 km to the north and set up a camp on the ice a. It was believed that with the ice drift within a year to get to the coast of Siberia, the soil was circling but only in a whirl. After half a year Storkerson broke from the company and returned to Flaxman Iceland on November 8.