Diomede Islands

• 1. Introduction

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  The Diomede Islands sit in the middle of the Bering Strait, roughly halfway between Alaska and Siberia, and they may be the strangest pair of neighbors on earth. Two rocky, mesa-like lumps of land separated by just 3.8 kilometers of cold Arctic water. You could nearly shout across the gap. Yet standing on one island, you would be a full day ahead of anyone standing on the other. The International Date Line runs directly between them, making Big Diomede, on the Russian side, 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede, on the American side. That quirk has earned them an evocative pair of nicknames: Tomorrow Island and Yesterday Island. How did two chunks of rock become a border between superpowers, a symbol of the Cold War, and the starting point for a journey around the entire Pacific? That is the story waiting on both sides of the Ice Curtain.

• 2. A Saint's Name

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  Vitus Bering, a Danish navigator sailing in Russian service, first sighted these islands on the 16th of August 1728 by the old calendar, or the 27th of August by the new. That date was not arbitrary. It was the day the Russian Orthodox Church honors the memory of the Greek martyr Saint Diomedes, and Bering named the islands accordingly. Four years later, in 1732, a Russian geodesist named Mikhail Gvozdev took measurements precise enough to establish the longitude and latitude of both islands. His contribution is still recognized in Russia today, where the islands carry a second name: the Gvozdev Islands. Before Bering, the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev had reached the Bering Strait as early as 1648 and reported two islands whose inhabitants wore bone lip ornaments. Whether those were the Diomedes remains uncertain, but Dezhnev holds the distinction of being the first European known to have navigated the strait at all.

• 3. Ancient Ground

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  Long before any European navigator arrived, these islands had a much larger identity. They were once the mountaintops of the Bering land bridge, the vast continental shelf that connected Asia and the Americas before rising seas swallowed it. The summit peaks simply stayed above the water while the valley floors disappeared beneath the strait. The Inupiat people made their home on Little Diomede, and their presence there predates any map drawn by Bering or Gvozdev by a very long stretch. By the time of the 2010 census, the population on Little Diomede had declined to 115 people, all of them living in the village of Diomede on the island's west side. That village, which also forms the entirety of the city of Diomede, Alaska, contains a school, a post office, and a store, and some of its residents are recognized for their ivory carving.

• 4. The Border and the Purchase

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  The 1867 treaty that finalized the Alaska Purchase between the United States and Russia used the Diomede Islands as the literal pivot point for the international boundary. The treaty language named the two islands directly, calling them Krusenstern Island, or Ignaluk, on the American side, and Ratmanov Island, or Nunarbuk, on the Russian side, and drew the border equidistantly between them before extending it northward into the Arctic Ocean. That border sits approximately 2 kilometers from each island, at the longitude 168 degrees 58 minutes 37 seconds west. Big Diomede, the Russian island, holds the distinction of being the easternmost point of Russia. So a line drawn through two small rocky outcroppings in the middle of a freezing strait became one of the most consequential borders in the world, dividing not just two nations but two hemispheres of time.

• 5. The Ice Curtain

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  During the Cold War, the 3.8-kilometer channel between the two islands carried enormous symbolic weight. That narrow strip of frigid water was all that separated the United States from the Soviet Union, and it became known as the Ice Curtain. In winter, the gap typically freezes over entirely, and an ice bridge forms between the two islands. In 1987, swimmer Lynne Cox crossed from one island to the other, a feat that drew congratulations from both Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. After establishing a military base on Big Diomede in 1948, the Soviet government had removed the island's indigenous population to mainland Russia. The island has been inhabited only by military personnel ever since. Little Diomede, by contrast, kept its civilian community, connected to the wider world through commercial air service maintained under the US Essential Air Service program when weather allows.

• 6. A Journey Begins

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  In the summer of 1995, British television presenter Michael Palin chose Little Diomede Island as the starting point for a counterclockwise journey around the entire Pacific Rim, a trip that would take him through 18 countries over eight months as part of the BBC series Full Circle. His plan was to return to the island at the end of the journey and complete the circle, but rough seas made that impossible. The island that launched his odyssey stayed out of reach. Little Diomede has also been mentioned repeatedly as a logical stopping point for any future Bering Strait crossing, whether bridge or tunnel, that might one day link the American and Asian road and rail networks. The ice bridge that forms naturally between the two islands each winter points toward what such a crossing might follow.