Saint Lawrence Island

Saint Lawrence Island in Detail.

In the northern part of the Bering Sea, 126 mi SW of Nome, and 120 mi S of Bering Strait. 90 miles long. 1792 square miles in size.

Saint Lawrence Island is the sixth biggest island in the US, and lies in the northern-center of the Bering Sea.

The 2,000+ reindeer Rangifer tarandus on Saint Lawrence Island belong to Savoonga IRA.

Discovered by Vitus Bering on Saint Lawrence day August 10, 1728 (Old Style (O.S.) calendar) and named by him, Saint Lawrence. Of this G. F. Muller (1761, p. 3) wrote: "They heard of an island which was said to lie somewhat farther, at no great distance from the continent; to this they gave the name of Saint Lawrence, on account of its being the 10th of August, that saint's day, when they passed by it, without observing anything upon it besides cottages of fishermen." It was also called "Sind" on early Russian charts, for Lieutenant Sind (the name is actually Sindt or Synd and so the map reference might have been misinterpreted or unclear), who passed somewhere near it in 1766. Captain James Cook, Royal Navy (RN), passed east of this island in 1778 and west of it in 1779. Its eastern end he named "Anderson Island" for Dr. William Anderson, surgeon on His (Her) Majesty's Ship (HMS) Discovery, believing it to be a separate island. Later, according to Captain F. W. Beechey, Cook found that it was part of what th

In 1979 the BLM gave the native population interim conveyance of the island. They were to receive the final title when the government finished its survey of the island, which was 2016, when the villages of Gambell and Savoonga were returned ownership of Saint Lawrence Island with a title.