24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Platinum, AK

Platinum (Central Yupik: Arviiq) is a city in Bethel Census Area, Alaska, on a spit on Goodnews Bay near the mouth of the Small River, about 11 miles southwest of Goodnews.

As of the 2020 census, the population was 55, down from 61 in 2010.

The city was incorporated on February 13, 1975.

Platinum was named in the 1930s for the platinum ore found in the area; by 1937 it was a mining boomtown with a roadhouse, two trading posts, and a population of 50, and a post office had been established in 1935.

An earlier Inuit village called Arviq had been abandoned before the mining town grew.

In 1926, Walter Smith discovered what he thought was "white gold" at the mouth of Fox Gulch; samples sent to the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Fairbanks proved it was actually platinum.

The placer deposits contained about 60 percent platinum and 22 percent iridium, and the largest nugget found on Squirrel Creek weighed 1.5 ounces.

During World War II, the Alaska Territorial Guard safeguarded Platinum because it was the only source of the strategic metal platinum in the Western Hemisphere.

Ray Petersen Flying Service won the exclusive 1937 contract to fly for the Goodnews Bay platinum and iridium mine from its base at Bethel.

The Lower Kuskokwim School District operates the Arviq School, kindergarten through grade 12, which closed in spring 2001 and reopened in October 2007, with 20 students as of 2018.