On the edge of America, the U.S. Census started in a tiny Alaska town on the Bering Sea. Toksook Bay, population 661, is only reachable by plane, and isn’t an easy place to live, much less report. The temperatures hover around zero, and daylight is scarce this time of year.
Alaska news editor Mark Thiessen and San Diego photographer Greg Bull traveled 500 and 4,200 miles, respectively, to get to the windswept community, several days before census officials and most media showed up. The census always starts in rural Alaska out of tradition and necessity: the ground is still frozen, which allows easier access before the spring melt makes many areas inaccessible to travel and residents scatter to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds.
George Chakuchin, left, and Mick Chakuchin look out over the Bering Sea near Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 18, 2020. Census workers traditionally begin the official decennial count in rural Alaska when the ground is still frozen. That allows easier access before the spring melt makes many areas inaccessible to travel and residents scatter to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds. The rest of the nation, including more urban areas of Alaska, begin the census in mid-March.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
An aerial view of Toksook Bay, Alaska, December 2019.
Matt Hage / AP Images for U.S. Census Bureau
A girl waits for her mother in remote Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 19, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Children play in the snow in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Mary Kailukiak fishes for tomcod and smoalt on the Bering Sea near Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
A man picks up a package at the post office in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
A woman arrives for Sunday services at the St. Peter Fisherman Church in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 19, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
At her home in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Lizzie Chimiugak, right, gets a hug from her granddaughter, Janet Lawrence, on Jan. 20, 2020. Chimiugak, 90, was scheduled to be the first person counted in the 2020 U.S. Census the following day.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Family pictures hang on the wall as Lizzie Chimiugak talks on the phone at her home in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 20, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
On the eve of the census, Darlene Lincoln, center, laughs as she takes part in an Alaska Native dance in Toksook Bay, Alaska, a mostly Yup'ik village on the edge of the Bering Sea, Jan. 20, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Rosemary Henry, left, and Kaziah Therichik prepare for an Alaska Native dance in honor of the arrival of the Census bureau director in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Census bureau director Steven Dillingham, in blue jacket, rides behind Dennis Kashatok as they arrive to conduct the first enumeration of the 2020 Census in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Census bureau director Steven Dillingham, right, knocks on the door alongside census worker Tim Metzger as they arrive to conduct the first enumeration of the 2020 Census in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
A Census 2020 form in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
An Alaska Native dance is performed in the school gymnasium during a celebration on the day of the census count in Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Thiessen spent months preparing, planning flights, arranging lodging (there are no hotels, so they slept on a classroom floor), planning meals (frozen burritos, to avoid paying $5 for Campbell’s soup), and making connections in the community. His planning and knowledge of the travails of rural Alaska travel paid off: Many news organizations didn’t make it because the weather got much worse after Thiessen and Bull arrived.
Toksook Bay is the ultimate small town, and residents can be distrustful of people they don’t know. Spending four days in the community, Bull and Thiessen got rare access to day-to-day life, showing residents fishing, celebrating and playing in the snow. Their story, photos and video introduced the rest of the world to the small town and its Yup’ik people, giving rich details of a world unlike any other place in the United States.
Even their crude living arrangements came in handy. Their cell phones didn’t work, so when Thiessen went to the school to use the phone to try reach the family of the first person who was to be counted, he found out the woman’s granddaughter was a teacher. She helped translate a key all-formats interview with 90-year-old Lizzie Chimiugak, who speaks Yugtun, the Yup’ik language.
When the Census director finally arrived, delayed by bad weather, and the work officially started, Thiessen and Bull were able to quickly file the spot news that the Census had begun.
The story got wide play in the U.S. and beyond, with NBC doing a Twitter thread promoting the work. The Anchorage Day News, the top member in the state, relied on AP’s story and posted a special photo presentation online. The work ran on front pages of newspapers as distant, literally and figuratively, as the Tampa Bay Times.
Greg Bull, left, photographs Mary Kailukiak as she fishes on the Bering Sea near Toksook Bay, Alaska, Jan. 18, 2020. At right, Mark Thiessen files on Jan. 18 from the school where the pair stayed while in Toksook Bay.
AP Photos / Thiessen (left), Bull
Thiessen and Bull even found time to do a panel discussion with a high school government class about the role of journalists and government accountability. The teacher who asked said they’d never get another opportunity like that.
For covering the news in a far-flung part of the country, providing a window into a remote way of life, and overcoming myriad technical obstacles and very cold fingers, Thiessen and Bull win this week’s Best of the States award.