The largest uninhabited island on Earth.
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At 74º latitude, Devon Island is nearly 5,000 miles north of Hawaii—and more than five times the size. Remote, windswept, and harsh, the isle is classified as a polar desert, with barren mountains rising above frost-worn beaches, where seabirds fill the skies and the occasional muskox wanders along the shore. Lying along the storied Northwest Passage in Nunavut, Canada, Devon Island remains uninhabited.
But that’s not to say humans haven’t tried. People have failed to live on the Arctic isle for centuries, with the last settlement occurring in 1951. Ancient Inuit settlements sit alongside a military ghost town, relics of doomed expeditions, and even a NASA research station perched at the edge of a massive crater. Today, Devon Island showcases the long, long art of human survival to its few visitors.
Devon’s forgotten stories
If Devon Island sounds familiar, that’s likely because of the Lost Franklin Expedition. In 1845, 129 men on the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set out to map the fabled Northwest Passage for Great Britain—never to return. Search parties began in 1848, and the first Franklin clue was found in 1850: a naturalist’s rake discovered on Devon Island. Other finds included a piece of canvas marked “Terror”; 700 empty, lead-lined meat tins; and dozens more traces of the Franklin crew, from clothes to iron, rope, and pipes.In 1852, Sir Edward Belcher led the last rescue attempt for the missing men. Staying on Devon Island, the team lined a small bay with survey and marker cairns—an area now known as Port Refuge National Historic Site. Though Belcher’s rescue mission was unsuccessful, one of his ships, the HMS Resolute, would find quite the legacy. Its timbers later helped build one of the world’s most iconic pieces of furniture—the Resolute Desk, still used by U.S. presidents today.
Once the Northwest Passage was successfully mapped some 70 years later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) wanted to stake their flag on Devon Island. In 1924, three RCMP officers—and 52 forcibly displaced Inuit—were sent to rule over the high Arctic at Dundas Harbour, where the island’s ragged cliffs and rocky beaches overlook Lancaster Sound. “It really was about asserting a presence—they weren’t necessarily policing,” says Kaylee Baxter, an archaeologist with Adventure Canada. “It was more about boots on the ground, keeping other nations from claiming the Arctic as their own.”
Within three years, two of the officers were dead: One had committed suicide, and the other had accidentally shot himself—or so the story goes. As for the remaining officer and Inuit families, they soon abandoned their isolated home. The RCMP shut down the post in 1933, reopened it in 1945, and then shut it down for good in 1951.
The regularly maintained graves of the two officers remain, resting on a hill above the forlorn outpost, in the most northern cemetery in the world. The grave of an Inuit girl lies unceremoniously a few steps away. “It’s a pretty accurate representation of colonization in the Arctic,” says Baxter.
Compared to Devon Island’s first inhabitants, Canada’s “Mounties” and those wayward British explorers are modern visitors. A stone’s throw from Belcher’s cairns at Port Refuge National Historic Site, archaeologists have found artifacts up to 4,000 years old, offering evidence of ancestral Inuit contact with the medieval Norse colonies of Greenland. Asiatic artifacts have been found here, too, denoting far-reaching, northern trade routes spanning half the globe.
At Dundas Harbour, just steps from the RCMP post lies the rocky remains of a roughly 1,000-year-old ancestral Inuit “neighborhood.” The Morin Point Thule site holds clues to the first pioneers crossing the eastern Arctic—and it’s eroding away. “It’s a great example of coastal erosion at archaeological sites,” says Baxter, who is helping to record the site before it disappears. “A great example in the worst way.”
Simulating survival on Mars
NASA and the Mars Institute are the latest to take on Devon Island’s challenges. With the island’s extreme cold, limited communication systems, and lack of sunlight and vegetation, scientists are carrying out analog missions—or practice runs—simulating Mars exploration. The Haughton–Mars Project allows astronauts to train in formidable conditions, test equipment to its limits, and research plant growth and long-duration spaceflight challenges.Of course, the island is deemed too harsh for a permanent research station. Modular summer tents are set up at the 14-mile-wide Haughton impact crater, one of the northernmost craters on the planet. But even NASA’s best-equipped teams avoid the island’s brutal winters.
Planning your own expedition
While Devon Island may be uninhabited, Nunavut’s northern communities, like nearby Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay, are very much alive. “There’s so much culture here,” says Jason Edmunds, vice-chair of the board at Travel Nunavut and one of Canada’s only Inuit expedition leaders. “When you’re in the region, think about the culture itself. Don’t just concentrate on the impacts of another culture on it.”Today, most visitors explore Devon Island and its Arctic neighbors via expedition cruise. Companies like Adventure Canada and Lindblad Expeditions offer itineraries through the Northwest Passage, where travelers can engage in wildlife viewing, hiking, and exploring ancient Inuit settlements and relics from past expeditions. Though, it’s essential to understand the crux of expedition cruising. Your itinerary will flex with the ice, just like every journey here has since that first Inuit explorer.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/devon-island-arctic-explorers-nasa-mars-missions
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Looks a lot like Mars, except for the sunlight and water.
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@Jolly It is quite interesting that you posted that. There was just another article about the Franklin expedition.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/11/science/franklin-lost-expedition-cannibalism/index.html
Archaeologists have identified the cannibalized remains of a senior officer who perished during an ill-fated 19th century Arctic expedition, offering insight into its lost crew’s tragic and grisly final days.
and
In April 1848, exactly three years after the vessels departed England, the expedition crew abandoned the ice-trapped ships following the death of Franklin and 23 other men. Fitzjames helped lead 105 survivors on a long retreat; the men pulled boats on sledges overland in the hope of finding safety. However, the men all lost their lives during the arduous journey although the exact circumstances of their deaths remain a mystery.
“It went horribly wrong, horribly quickly,” said archaeologist Doug Stenton, an adjunct professor of anthropology at University of Waterloo in Canada, who led the research.
Old exploring trips really fascinate me. One of the best books that I read on the subject was "In the Kingdom of Ice"
https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/95/what-are-you-reading-now/78?_=1729215595068
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Darn it! I had a really thoughtful reply here (I even wrote bullet points on paper as I was thinking about it) before the forum issue. Oh well. I think my points, similar to @taiwan_girl was:
- I really enjoy viewing satellite maps, zooming in on remote towns around the world, viewing their stores (if they even have one) and other details
- I went down the wikipedia blackhole about the northwest passage (NWP)
- Further read about Amundsen and his trek to the south pole, then north pole, the 3-year journey to make it through the NWP.. even how he celebrated by docking in San Fran in 1906... but the town was a little busy with something that happened earlier in the year (the massive earthquake)
I thought they should make a movie about Amundsen... guess they did make one (foreign film) in like 2019 that I'll have to check out
