Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Kobuk, AK

Kobuk (Inupiaq: Laugviik) is an incorporated city in Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, on the bank of the Kobuk River about six miles northeast of Shungnak and near Kobuk Valley National Park.

Kobuk was incorporated as a city on September 25, 1973.

The 2020 census counted 191 people in Kobuk, living in 41 households across 53 housing units.

Kobuk was founded in 1899 as the village of Shungnak, a supply point for miners north of the Kobuk River in the Cosmos Hills, where a trading post, school, and mission were built.

In the 1920s, river erosion led many residents to relocate ten miles downstream to a site called Kochuk, which became the new Shungnak, while the original settlement was renamed Kobuk in 1928.

In May 1973, a flood covered the entire village of Kobuk, just months before it incorporated as a city that September.

Kobuk's first postmaster, Martin F. Moran, was appointed on September 24, 1903, when the settlement was still called Shungnak.

Kobuk's economy is based on subsistence hunting for caribou and moose.

Kobuk recorded a temperature of minus 68 degrees Fahrenheit on March 1, 1971, the coldest temperature ever recorded in the United States in the month of March.

Kobuk's 2020 median age was 21.8 years, with 41.9 percent of residents under 18 and 83.8 percent American Indian and Alaska Native.