24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Kaltag, AK

Kaltag is an incorporated city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area on the west bank of the Yukon River, about 75 miles west of Galena, and its ZIP code is 99748.

Its Koyukon name is Ggaał Doh, and it was named by Russians for a Koyokon man named Kaltaga.

The 2020 census counted 158 people in Kaltag, living in 62 households, down from 190 in 2010.

The city was formally incorporated on June 6, 1969.

Kaltag sits on an old portage trail that led west through the mountains to Unalakleet, and the area was long used by Koyukon Athabascans, including as a cemetery for surrounding villages.

A smallpox epidemic in 1839 killed a large part of the area's population, and a measles epidemic and food shortages in 1900 reduced it by another third, after which survivors from three nearby villages founded the present village.

A trading post opened around 1880, just before the gold rush of 1884-85, and Yukon steamboats supplied gold prospectors through the area, with 46 boats operating on the river in the peak year of 1900.

A minor gold rush occurred in the area in the 1880s, and after gold seekers left for Fairbanks or Nome in 1906, Kaltag grew as a transportation point for the Galena lead mines that began operating in 1919, declining in the 1940s as mining declined.

The old cemetery caved into the river around 1937, and an airport and clinic were built during the 1960s.

Kaltag holds a week-long Stick Dance, a memorial potlatch, every two years that draws visitors from many neighboring villages.