Attractions

The Iñupiat Heritage Center (tel. 907/852-0422) is the town's main attraction and one of Alaska's most remarkable cultural institutions. It is part museum, part gathering center, and part venue for living culture. Inside is a workshop for craftspeople where hunters build the traditional boats and tools they use and where drummers build their drums; during the summer, an artist is usually in residence for visitors. There is a performance space for storytellers and dancers, and conference rooms where elders tell old stories or identify a rich store of artifacts. In the museum area, displays of artifacts change regularly, while a permanent exhibits covers Eskimo whaling and the influence of Yankee whaling on it (the quiet pride here carries a real emotional wallop). Iñupiaq dancing and drumming demonstrations, a blanket toss, games, and a craft sale happen every afternoon in the summer from 1:30 to 3:30pm; these are the same programs that are the highlight of the escorted tours. Admission, including the program, is $15. The center is open Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5pm (to see the program on weekends, call ahead). Regular admission is $5 adults, $2 students, free for seniors and age 14 or younger.

The other site that's worthy of a special trip is NARL, as the former Navy Arctic Research Laboratory is known. This was once the world's largest Arctic research site, with scores of buildings on the narrow spit of land north of town. Today the navy is long gone, but Barrow's Native corporation took over the buildings and nurtured scientific research here. Once again the facilities are the nation's busiest year-round Arctic research site. It's interesting just to walk around, and the cafeteria in the Ilisagvik College building serves three good meals a day. The UIC Science Center (tel. 907/852-3050), at the north end of the complex, has interesting displays about Arctic science and anthropology that are open to the public. The daily escorted tours stop across the road but do not enter; independent travelers can usually find it open Monday through Friday 8:30am to 5pm, closed during lunch hour noon to 1pm; however, the two-person staff may not be handy at times, so it could pay to call ahead.

The main tourism business in town is Tundra Tours (tel. 800/882-8478 or 907/852-3900; www.tundratoursinc.com). Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a corporation representing the Iñupiat, owns the company and the Top of the World Hotel. Their tour (the same one sold through Alaska Airlines Vacations) introduces the town to visitors who arrive with little idea of what to expect. The 6-hour summer tour, in a small bus, drives around the town to visit an Eskimo skin boat, the cemetery, and the Arctic Ocean, for a dip of toes. The highlight is a visit to the Heritage Center with a cultural presentation, including Eskimo dance and a chance to buy crafts made by Native artists. The day-trip tour is $499 from Fairbanks, or $599 per person, double occupancy, for the tour and a night in Barrow at the Top of the World Hotel, giving you time on your own without the tour group; both prices include airfare and can save over buying a plane ticket alone. Book the tour through Alaska Airlines Vacations or with Tundra Tours at the numbers listed above. If you buy the tour separately when you are already in Barrow, it's $95. They also offer a winter tour for seeing the aurora ($99 separately), which does not include the cultural elements.

In season, Barrow is a good place to see polar bears. The bears are always around when the ice is in; they're dangerous and people take extreme care to avoid them. Barrow and other North Slope communities have minimized the danger of bears in town by setting up sites outside of the villages to dispose of gut piles and other hunting waste. It's a way of bribing the bears to leave the town alone. In Barrow, heavy equipment hauls the leftovers from fall whale butchering -- bones and a few inedible organs -- out to the very end of the point. Polar bears come for an easy meal whenever the pack ice is close to shore, which is October through June. Commercial tours take visitors out to the point in all-terrain vans or Humvees that can drive on the beach gravel. Arrangements change annually and these are casual home businesses, so if polar bear viewing is your goal, be sure to make firm arrangements with someone before you go. Arctic Tours (tel. 907/852-4512 or 907/852-1462 cell) takes visitors out in a Humvee May through September on a 2-hour tour that costs $70 per person, with a 2-person minimum. Go only in May, June, or earlier, when the sea ice is in; you stand little chance of seeing a bear during times of open water, in the summer or fall.