Kusilvak Census Area, formerly known as Wade Hampton Census Area, is a census area located in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,368, up from 7,459 in 2010. It is part of the Unorganized Borough and therefore has no borough seat. Its largest community is the city of Hooper Bay, on the Bering Sea coast.
The census area's per capita income makes it the fourth-poorest county-equivalent in the United States. In 2014, it had the highest percentage of unemployed people of any county or census area in the United States, at 23.7 percent.
Additionally the area has the largest percentage of indigenous people with 96.9% of the population belonging to an indigenous group.
History
The census area was originally named for Wade Hampton III, a South Carolina politician whose son-in-law, John Randolph Tucker, a territorial judge in Nome, posthumously named a mining district in western Alaska for him in 1913. The district eventually became the census area, retaining its name. Over the next century, the name became increasingly controversial, with Native residents and others arguing Hampton's name did not represent Alaska and that his personal history as a slave-holding Civil War general was a blemish on the region. In July 2015, Alaska Governor Bill Walker formally notified the U.S. Census Bureau that the census area was being renamed after the Kusilvak Mountains, its highest range.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the census area has a total area of , of which is land and (13.2%) is water.
Adjacent boroughs and census areas
- Nome Census Area, Alaska – north
- Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska – east
- Bethel Census Area, Alaska – south
National protected area
- Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge (part)
- Andreafsky Wilderness (part)