Murchison Promontory
71°59′55″N 94°32′45″W / 71.99861°N 94.54583°W
Murchison Promontory is a peninsula in northern Canada that is the northernmost point on mainland Canada and on the mainland of North America[1][2]; it is also one of the Extreme points of Earth. The distance to the North Pole is 1,087 nautical miles (1,251 mi; 2,013 km), or 64 km closer than the distance from Point Barrow, Alaska (the northernmost point in the United States) to the Pole.
Geography
Murchison Promontory is situated in the Nunavut territory on the northern part of the Boothia Peninsula in the northern Canadian Arctic. The northernmost point on the promontory is Zenith Point [3] with coordinates 72°00′04″N 94°33′27″W / 72.00111°N 94.55750°W.
The cape is located on the about 48 km long and 3 km wide Bellot Strait which separates it from Somerset Island and roughly about 250 km north of the township of Taloyoak.
Murchison Promontory is part of "Qitirmiut" (Kitikmeot Region).
History
The area was first explored in April 1852 by Canadian Captain William Kennedy and French Joseph René Bellot while searching for traces after John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition [4] [5]. The strait was then named after Bellot.
Irish Francis Leopold McClintock also wintercamped in the area with his ship "Fox" in the winter of 1858 - 1859 in his search for the Franklin expedition [6].
In 1937 Scottish E.J. Scotty Gall passed the promontory on his ship "Aklavik" on the first crossing of the Bellot Strait [7] travelling from the western shore to the eastern for the Hudson's Bay Company.
