i could say some sad things but i won't um like i go out my front door of my house and i used to see children riding by on their bicycles all the time i'm the only one that lives on my street now so that's that part you know i i miss the the the camaraderie of all the people but what we do have on the island we all love each other on this island there's no hatred between any of us we watch out i haven't taken the keys out of the ignition of any of the vehicles i've brought onto this island i i don't think i have a key to my front door well the us military brought people to the exposed island by the thousands for decades many in the years following have found the landscape the quiet the tight-knit community and the infrastructure left behind reason enough to move to the island or at least visit rather than becoming home to a handful of hopeless romantics too tied to the landscape to leave adec transitioned from bustling base to a small retrofitted quirky but very much connected town in NUMBER_TOKEN adac officially became an incorporated city its population of NUMBER_TOKEN a diverse plurality made up of white indigenous asian and hispanic peoples with the navy's departure the city along with the elute corporation set up to administer land settlements and run businesses on behalf of the elude people have purchased land and infrastructure from the military for the community's purposes these days an anchorage-bound alaska airlines boeing NUMBER_TOKEN takes off twice a week from adac airport a repurposed navy landing strip now comically over equipped for its current role as a small regional airport the town's handful of children still head to the oversized school that now also serves a host of municipal functions so yeah but the full-size school fairly new but the base just closed abruptly everybody left and and now we're just using a small wing of it uh the city is in control of it and um but everything is within the school the school is there the city offices are within the old school the small clinic is still there so they're they're adapting fishing boats and the fish processing plants though closed at the moment take advantage of the deep water ports in the airport to bring in people and ship out seafood resulting in tax revenue employment opportunities and customers for local businesses and if it's not hired hands hopping off the flight from anchorage it's visitors looking to take in the views of volcanic peaks fish the islands crystalline streams and coasts or hunt the caribou introduced decades prior the hunting number one for people coming here fishing a lot of people come here for the fishing for the salmon the dolly gardens uh the halibut uh the deep sea fishing stuff like that and then i get a lot of birders and flower people uh during this season the birders come to see the migration of the birds and they the birds stop off here and so they'll sit here for three weeks straight with their binoculars on and just watch these birds come in and these are rare rare birds that nowhere else in the world except here on adac hardly a run-of-the-mill rural american town a full NUMBER_TOKEN-hour travel day away from the nation's capital dotted with decaying cold war era buildings boasting gas prices that can run north of six dollars
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