This route was important enough that, according to an analysis by linguist Michael Krauss, the Central Siberian Yupik language continued up the coast, un-interrupted by the Naukansky dialect spoken in the village of Naukan on the headland.
In the early years, ships would call at Uelen to trade for furs produced along the arctic coast.
Subsequently, there were established trading stations at Uelen and Deshnevo (Chukchi name Keniskun; Yupik Kaniskak).
Naukan was evacuated in 1958 with most of the occupants relocated to Nunyamo near Saint Lawrence Bay, Chukotka, and Keniskun was merged with Uelen a little earlier.
In Josef Bauer's As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (1955), Cape Deshnev is given as the site of a Gulag lead-mine camp from which a German POW Clemens Forell (actual name: Cornelius Rost) escaped in 1949.