You Really Can See Russia From Here

I'm a real sucker for places that bill themselves as located at the edge of a land mass. So when researching an article on Air Force supply drops to remote radar sites in Alaska, I had the thrill of discovering that the Tin City radar site sits on the westernmost point of the North American continent.

Long before Sara Palin famously intoned, "You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska," The New York Times reported in 1988 that "on a clear day you can see Siberia with the naked eye."

Of course, as anyone with Google maps or Google Earth quickly learns, the Tin City radar site is located on the edge of the continent on Cape Prince of Wales.

For an even better view of Russia from Alaska, take a Web trip over to Little Diomede Island, about 30 miles northeast of Tin City, where the Bering Strait School District operates a Web cam that provides a close up view of Big Diomede Island, a Russian island only 2.5 miles away.

I love geography, and thanks to the Web, not only can I easily locate far away places with strange sounding names, I can also take a gander at them.

Kudos to the Bering Strait School District for setting up a bunch of Web cams that let us all peer across a border. I bet the kids there have a real appreciation for their geography lessons.