Bering Strait

The Bering Strait connects the Pacific and Arctic oceans, dividing Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula from Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. The maritime boundary between Russia and the United States runs along 168° 58' 37" W, just south of the Arctic Circle near 65° 40' N. It takes its name from Vitus Bering, a Danish-born explorer in Russian service. For decades, the leading scientific view has held that humans first entered the Americas from Asia via a land bridge called Beringia, which emerged when glacial ice locked up enough seawater to expose broad stretches of the seafloor in and around the present strait. Since at least the early 1900s, people have also made successful crossings without boats.

At its narrowest, the strait measures about 82 kilometers (51 miles) between Cape Dezhnev in Russia—Asia’s easternmost point at 169° 39' W—and Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska, the westernmost point of North America at 168° 05' W. Its maximum depth is only 90 meters (300 feet). To the north lies the Chukchi Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean), and to the south the Bering Sea. The area is sparsely inhabited by Yupik, Inuit, and Chukchi peoples, who share cultural and linguistic ties. Geologists believe the strait first opened between 4.8 and 7.4 million years ago, and that its narrowing around 900,000 years ago may have helped lengthen ice ages.

European geographers had speculated about a Strait of Anián between Asia and North America since at least 1562. Semyon Dezhnyov likely passed through in 1648, but his report never reached Europe. Vitus Bering entered the strait in 1728, and Mikhail Gvozdev became the first European to cross it, from Asia to America, in 1732. James Cook visited during his third voyage in 1778. American whalers were hunting bowhead whales there by 1847. In March 1913, German captain Max Gottschalk became the first documented modern voyager to cross from Russia to North America without a boat, traveling by dogsled via the Diomede Islands to Shishmaref, Alaska. In 1987, swimmer Lynne Cox covered 4.3 kilometers (2.7 miles) between the Diomede Islands from Alaska to the Soviet Union in 3.3 °C (37.9 °F) water, near the end of the Cold War; U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev jointly congratulated her.