Kodiak Island

57°20N 153°40W, pop (2002e) 12 000. Island in the Gulf of Alaska, USA; 160 km/100 mi long; scene of the first settlement in Alaska (by the Russians, 1784); till 1804 the centre for Russian interests in the USA and of the fur trade; dairying, cattle and sheep raising, fur trapping, fishing, farming, tourism; home of the Kodiak brown bear (grizzly), the largest living carnivore; Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge (1941); Baranof Museum (Alaska's oldest wooden structure).

Kodiak Island is a large island on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, separated from the Alaska mainland by the Shelikof Strait.

It is the largest island in Alaska and the second largest island in the United States, after the Big Island of Hawaii, with 8,975 square kilometres (3,465 mile²) of area. Kodiak Island is the largest island in the Kodiak Archipelago.

Kodiak Island is mountainous and heavily forested in the north and east and fairly treeless on the south.

Most of the island is a national wildlife refuge. The Kodiak Bear and the Kodiak king crab are native to the island. The first Westerners to settle on the island were Russians explorers under Grigory Shelikhov, who founded a Russian settlement on Kodiak Island at Three Saints Bay, near the present-day village of Old Harbor, in 1784.

The Koniagas had been studied by European explorers, who marveled at their practice of male concubinage: "A Kodiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans'" (Richard Francis Burton in his Terminal Essay, after Holmberg, Langsdorff, Joseph Billings, Choris, Yuri Lisiansky and Marchand)

Kodiak Island was explored in 1763 by Russian fur trader Stepan Glotov. The island was the location of the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska, founded by Grigory Shelikhov, a fur trader, on Three Saints Bay in 1784. In 1912 the eruption of Novarupta on the mainland (erroneously attributed at one time to the more famous Mount Katmai) blanketed the island with volcanic ash, causing widespread destruction and loss of life.

Kodiak Island is part of the Kodiak Island Borough of Alaska. The largest town on the island is Kodiak.