About

At the edge of the Bering Sea.

Cold Bay sits at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, roughly 625 air miles southwest of Anchorage. It's small — about fifty year-round residents — but the airport is one of the largest in the state, a legacy of WWII when it was built as a strategic Aleutian outpost.

Today the community is the gateway to Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, where nearly the entire global population of Pacific black brant stages each fall, and to some of the finest brown bear, caribou, and waterfowl hunting anywhere on the continent. Photographers, birders, anglers, and researchers pass through year-round.

Latitude

55.20° N

Population

~50

Airport code

CDB

Founded

1942 (WWII)

Nearest refuge

Izembek NWR

Time zone

AKST (UTC-9)

"The wind here has weight. You feel it before you see it moving across the tundra."

— Excerpt, The Complete Guide to Cold Bay