As of 2003[update], the city includes a community hall, a clinic run by the U.S. Public Health Service, a post office, a church, two stores, and a National Guard armory.

The city was established in 1901 as a supply station for interior gold mining called "Yutica" near the historic Malemiut Eskimo village of Inmachukmiut.

The racial makeup of the city was 93.38% Native American (Iñupiat), 5.88% White, and 0.74% from two or more races.

A first-hand account written by Captain James D. Winchester and published in 1900 tells that the Abbie M. Deering was bought by a company of twenty men who wanted to sail to the "Alaskan Gold Fields" during the Klondike Gold Rush.

They left Lynn, Massachusetts in November 1897, passed through the Straits of Magellan, and arrived at San Francisco five months later, where they sold the ship.

Records kept by the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior show the schooner did make it to Alaska, where it was lost in the Aleutian Islands in September 1903.

Rudyard Kipling's 1897 novel Captains Courageous mentions the Abbie M. Deering by name.