When the North Slope is Home

Hundreds of millions of years ago, shale, sandstone, and other organic matter was deposited on the northern coast of Alaska, washing in with the tides or sliding off the mountain ranges. These substances lay dormant, compressing into oil over time. It was the discovery of this massive oil deposit at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 that brought the North Slope's people and geology to the world stage and changed the course of Alaska's future, ushering in the construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline and bringing in a flood of outside workers and interests.