History Prehistory

This remote Arctic island is believed to be the final place on Earth to support Woolly Mammoths as an isolated population until their extinction 4000 years ago, making them the most recent surviving population known to science.^[3][6] A specific variant of the species seems to have survived as a dwarf version of the species originating from Siberia. A combination of late climate change (warming) and the presence of modern humans using advanced hunting and survival skills probably hastened their demise on this frozen isle which until recently was ice bound for most years with infrequent breaks of clear water in some Arctic summers. A mirror development can be found with the Dwarf elephant on Malta, originating from the African species.

Evidence for prehistoric human occupation was uncovered in 1975 at the Chertov Ovrag site.^[7] Various stone and ivory tools were found, including a toggling harpoon. Radiocarbon dating shows the human inhabitation roughly coeval with the last mammoths on the island circa 1700 BC, though no direct evidence of mammoth hunting has been found.

A legend prevalent among the Chukchi people of Siberia tells of a chief Krachai (or Krächoj or Krahay), who fled with his people (the Krachaians or Krahays, also identified as the Onkilon or Omoki) across the ice to settle in a northern land.^[8][9] Though the story may be mythical, the existence of an island or continent to the north was lent credence by the annual migration of reindeer across the ice, as well as the appearance of slate spear-points washed up on Arctic shores, made in a fashion unknown to the Chukchi. Archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence has recently been presented that Wrangel Island was a way station on a trade-route linking the Inuit settlement at Point Hope, Alaska with the north Siberian coast, and that the coast may have been colonized in late prehistoric and early historic times by Inuit settlers from North America. The departure of these colonists is suggested to be related to the Krachai legend.^[10]

Outside discovery

In 1764 the Cossack Sergeant Stepan Andreyev claimed to have sighted this island. Calling it Tikegen Land, Andreyev found evidence of its inhabitants, the Krahay. Eventually, the island was named after Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel (1797–1870), who, after reading Andreyev's report and hearing Chukchi stories of land at the island's coordinates, set off on an expedition (1820–1824) to discover the island, with no success.

British, American, and Russian expeditions

In 1849, Henry Kellett, captain of HMS Herald, landed on and named Herald Island. He thought he saw another island to the west, which he called Plover Island; thereafter it was indicated on British admiralty charts as Kellett Land.

The first recorded landing on the island was in 1866 by a German whaler, Eduard Dallmann.

In August 1867, Thomas Long, an American whaling captain, "approached it as near as fifteen miles. I have named this northern land Wrangell [sic] Land … as an appropriate tribute to the memory of a man who spent three consecutive years north of latitude 68°, and demonstrated the problem of this open polar sea forty-five years ago, although others of much later date have endeavored to claim the merit of this discovery."

George W. DeLong, commanding USSJeanette, led an expedition in 1879 attempting to reach the North Pole, expecting to go by the "east side of Kellett land," which he thought extended far into the Arctic. His ship became locked in the polar ice pack and drifted westward, passing within sight of Wrangel before being crushed and sunk in the vicinity of the New Siberian Islands. A landing on Wrangel Island took place on August 12, 1881, by a party from the USRC Corwin, who claimed the island for the United States and named it "New Columbia." The expedition, under the command of Calvin L. Hooper, was seeking the Jeannette and two missingwhalers in addition to conducting general exploration. It included naturalist John Muir, who published the first description of Wrangel Island. The USS Rodgers, also searching for the Jeannette, landed a party on Wrangel Island, also in 1881 but after the Corwin party. They stayed about two weeks and conducted an extensive survey and search.

In 1911, the Russian Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition on icebreakers Vaygach and Taymyr under Boris Vilkitsky, landed on the island.