Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Tanana, AK

Tanana is an incorporated city in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers, about 130 air miles west of Fairbanks.

The 2020 census counted 246 residents in Tanana; its Koyukon name is Hohudodetlaatl Denh, literally "where the area has been chopped," and it was formerly known as Clachotin.

Almost 80 percent of residents are Native Americans, traditionally Koyukon (Denaakk'e) speakers of the Athabaskan language family.

Before settlers arrived in the early 1860s, the point of land at the river confluence, called Nuchalawoyyet, was a traditional meeting and trading place for several indigenous groups.

A French Canadian company founded a trading station called Mercier here in 1868, and the U.S. Army founded Fort Gibbon at the present site in 1898 under Captain P.H. Ray to maintain the telegraph line between Fairbanks and Nome.

The Native Village of Tanana was officially chartered by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1939.

Tanana formally incorporated as a city on June 7, 1961, and in 1982 it incorporated as a first-class city in order to take control of the local school system.

A hospital complex was once a major employer in Tanana, with 54 employees and a $1.6 million payroll, but it closed in 1982.

In 2024 the city council voted 4-0 to ask the Alaska Local Boundary Commission to reclassify Tanana from a first-class to a second-class city, effective July 1, 2024.

The city's 2020 population of 246 was certified by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in that 2024 reclassification request.