Fairway Rock

Although uninhabited, the island is a nesting site for seabirds — most notably the least and crested auklet — which prompt egg-collecting visits from local indigenous peoples.

[2] Rising steeply from the surrounding waters to 534 ft (163 m) above sea level, Fairway Rock can be easily seen from the mainland coast of Alaska at Cape Prince of Wales.

[6] Ocean currents north of Fairway Rock are occasionally studied as an example of a real-world system where a Von Kármán vortex street is generated.

[19] What is considered the last offensive action of the American Civil War happened in this area: the CSS Shenandoah fell upon a fleet of whalers working the waters near Alaska's Little Diomede Island and sank more than two dozen ships on June 22, 1865.

[20] In 1964, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282) visited the rock, and installed an unmanned, propane-powered oceanographic station in order to measure water flows across the Bering Strait.

[21] On August 11, 1966,[22] the US Navy placed a strontium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) atop Fairway Rock for "powering environmental instruments".

However, moving the new generator from Baltimore to Alaska to Fairway Rock would be a complicated process and LeDoux suspected that "red tape" would delay the operation for a long time.

A bush pilot was contracted, two refueling locations were set up by the Army Corps of Engineers, and a Coast Guard escort (USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282)) was assigned, allowing the journey over the Bering Strait to be made safely.

All three RTGs were removed from the rock in 1995[23] in a joint Army/Navy operation with Chinook helicopters from B Company, 4th Battalion, 123rd Aviation Regiment, the "Sugar Bears"[26] of Fort Wainwright, AK.

[27] The three RTGs were transported from Fort Wainwright, AK to the Richland Consolidation Facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state for disposal.