St. Michael (also known as St. Michael's) began life as a Russian-American fort, the first trading post in the Yukon valley. It was built on an island in Norton Sound, just off the coast of present-day Alaska.
In 1833 a Russian naval officer, Lieutenant Mikhail Tebenkov, established a trading post near the mouth of the great river that an earlier Russian explorer, Ivanov, had discovered 40 years before. On a previous expedition to chart Norton Sound, Tebenkov had failed to find the river, which one day would be called the Yukon. But he believed it could best be exploited by establishing a post on an island in the Sound, which he named after himself, Mikhailovskii or St. Michael Redoubt.
The post was built in ten days, with the help of the people of the First Nation. William Dall later described it as primitive, dismal and dirty. It had log living quarters and storehouses built around a square. The square in turn was surrounded by a ten-foot fence to keep out the constant wind. Outside the fence was the Russian Orthodox Church. The employees were mostly convicts from Siberia, and discipline was brutal and strict.
After the purchase of Alaska by the Americans in 1867, St. Michael became one of the posts of the Alaska Commercial Company. By this time the Kvihkpak (later Yukon) River had been rediscovered, and travellers took a shortcut directly east from St. Michael to reach the river. Its location as a sea port made it the destination for ocean steamers, and the central supply point for all the posts along the Yukon River.
Now known as Saint Michael, the community still survives in present-day Alaska.
