Okpilak River

USGS Listed Name: Okpilak River

Okpilak is said to mean “no willows” in Inupiaq, a reference to the river-valley’s sparse vegetation. Place names with this kind of environmental information are becoming increasingly meaningful as ecosystems are altered by the warming climate. Shrubification is among the significant, well documented effects of climate change, and the ‘no willows’ connotation of the Okpilak River valley is fleeting.

The name Okpilak was reported in 1919 by Ernest de Koven Leffingwell, an Illinois-born explorer known for mapping significant portions of Alaska’s north slope in the early 1900s.