Deadhorse, Alaska counted 1,310 residents and not a single household
The 2020 census found 1,310 people living at Prudhoe Bay, also called Deadhorse, on Alaska's Arctic coast. It also found zero households, one vacant housing unit and roughly ten men for every woman. Nearly everyone there is an oil worker living in company camps rather than a home.
The oil field was discovered in 1967, after the US Navy had drilled on the Arctic coastal plain from 1944 to 1953 with little luck. Everything is built on artificial gravel pads laid over the tundra, mostly from prefabricated modules delivered by barge or air, and heavy construction waits for winter, when the ground freezes hard enough to bear equipment. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries the crude south to Valdez. Several thousand transient workers support operations at any time, far outnumbering official residents.
Names here have tangled origins. Sir John Franklin named the bay in 1826 after his classmate Algernon Percy, Baron Prudhoe, while charting the coast westward from the Mackenzie River. Deadhorse most likely comes from a local trucking outfit of the late 1960s and 1970s, Dead Horse Haulers, though nobody agrees how the company got its name. Alcohol is not sold in town, inspiring the joke slogan All that far and still no bar.
Getting there takes commitment. The Dalton Highway runs 495 miles from Fairbanks, a two-day bus trip with an overnight in Coldfoot, and the Arctic Ocean itself sits beyond an oilfield checkpoint, reachable only on guided tours booked a day ahead for background checks. Motorcyclists use the town as an endpoint for challenges such as a 30-day ride to Key West. Hospital patients must be flown about 45 minutes to Utqiaġvik, as no road links the two.
The climate is harsh. The sun stays up continuously from 20 May to 22 July and disappears from late November until mid-January. July averages just 48 °F, yearly precipitation is only 5.70 inches, and a January 1989 cold snap brought a record −62 °F. Caribou herds, polar bears, musk oxen and more than 200 bird species share the tundra.
Source: Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
