[4] The territory of the modern district has been populated since the Paleolithic age, though indigenous people are outnumbered by ethnic Russians by over three to one.

[12] To the south lies the administrative center and small port of Egvekinot, located on the Kresta Bay of the Gulf of Anadyr.

This valley is a key resource for the part of the population that does not live by the sea and contains the only significant stretch of road in the district, running from Egvekinot, through the indigenous locality of Amguema, to the now defunct mining settlement of Iultin.

Archaeological excavations have uncovered stone age camps and tools along the banks of both the Kymynanonvyaam and Maravaam Rivers.

[12] After Semyon Dezhnyov and his Cossack companions had established Anadyrsk in the 17th century, they began to explore the surrounding area and discovered the Kresta Bay in 1660, although it was not mapped properly until it was visited by Vitus Bering seventy years later.

[2] The economy on this territory received a major boost following the discovery in the 1930s of significant deposits of tin and tungsten in Mount Iultin.

[12] Following the end of World War II, Dalstroy used forced labor to build a port to help supply the mine, and in 1946, the MV Sovetskaya Latviya, one of a fleet of ships used by Dalstroy to transport prisoners to the Kolyma gulag,[15] landed in the Kresta Bay to begin construction.

Extreme conditions meant that, as in the construction of the Road of Bones, many prisoners died working and were buried where they fell and incorporated into the foundations of the port.

Outside of the main urban area of Egvekinot, the economy is driven mainly by either mineral extraction (the area is rich in pewter and wolframite as well as coal), traditional indigenous reindeer herding or sea-based hunting, with Chukchi farming centers such as Amguema, Vankarem, and Konergino holding nearly 25,000 head of reindeer in 2005.

In addition to the airports, Iultinsky District also contains the longest road in Chukotka, which goes from Egvekinot to Iultin through indigenous settlements such as Amguema.