Sand Point, Alaska

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Sand Point, also known as Qagun Tayagungin, is a city in Aleutians East Borough, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 952. It is located on northwestern Popof Island, off the Alaska Peninsula. It is in the Aleutians East Borough of Alaska, and is near the entrance to the Bering Sea. The Aleutians East Borough School District is located in Southwestern Alaska along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Chain The District was formed in 1988 from smaller districts who consolidated and formed a Borough with taxing authority. The Borough and District boundaries are the same, and stretch over approximately 15,000 square miles of road-less, mostly treeless tundra, from the middle of the Alaska Peninsula to the north and east, going southwest out to Akutan just east of Dutch Harbor. Sand Point was founded by a San Francisco fishing company in 1898 as a cod fishing station and trading post. Aleuts and Scandinavians were among the early residents. Gold mining was briefly a part of the economy during the early 1900s. Fishing remains an important industry, as Sand Point is home to one of the largest fishing fleets in the Aleutian Chain. Almost half the inhabitants are of Aleut descent - mainly from the Qagan Tayagungin tribe, and support themselves by fishing and fish processing. There is a cold storage and fish-processing plant called Trident and Peter Pan. There is an airport with a 4,000 foot paved runway and daily flights (weather permitting) to Anchorage, 575 airmiles to the northeast. The town is above the treeline, and there is a small herd of 120 bison (first introduced in the 1930s) which provides some meat for the island's inhabitants. It is notorious for the high winds caused by the meeting of cold air flows from the Bering Sea with the warm air over the Japan Current. It has a maritime climate, with temperature averages ranging from -9 to 76 °F (-23 to 24 °C), an average snowfall of 52 inches (130 cm) and an average rainfall of 33 inches (84 cm). The Russian Orthodox St. Nicholas Chapel was built in Sand Point in 1933.