Cape Espenberg

Cape Espenberg lies on the Arctic Circle at the terminus of a 30 km long mainland attached beach ridge plain at the northern limit of Seward Peninsula, in western Alaska.

At the entry of the shallow Kotzebue Sound embayment, Cape Espenberg faces a potential open water fetch of 1000 km across the Chukchi Sea, an impact that is restricted by a perennial ice cover decreasing in duration the last 10 years.

Due to an abundant offshore source, sandy barrier islands front most of the northwest facing Seward Peninsula from Bering Strait into Kotzebue Sound, enclosing several extensive lagoons.

The Chukchi Sea is microtidal < 50 cm, and the prevailing westerly currents maintain a series of widely spaced offshore bars that typically damp onshore wave energy.

A secondary source of sand may be as a fluvial addition from south-trending paleo-Noatak and Kobuk rivers cross the exposed subcontinent of Beringia, and reworked into Pleistocene dunes during lower sea levels.

A variety of clastic additions are common on the beach; these include the bones of Pleistocene megafauna (mostly horse, bison or mammoth), modern and ancient shell valves.

The beach featured lies about 1 km Northwest from the navigational light at the Cape and can be considered unaffected by human processes, since the National Park Service restricts the use of motor vehicles and the region is nearly uninhabited.

[5] In 2011, archaeologists found metal artifacts at Cape Espenberg, including a cast bronze buckle, very likely smelted in East Asia, either Siberia or farther South.

The metal objects were not locally cast, based on metallurgical analyses (X-ray fluorescence) by Purdue University Assistant Professor H. Kory Cooper.