Tiksi is an urban locality (a settlement

Urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...

) and the administrative center of Bulunsky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, situated on the Arctic Ocean

Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...

 coast. Population:

It is one of the principal ports for accessing the Laptev Sea

Laptev Sea

The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy...

. It is served by the Tiksi Airport

Tiksi Airport

Tiksi Aerodrome is located 1 km northeast of Tiksi, Russia and was built in the 1950s as a staging base for Soviet Long Range Aviation bombers to reach the United States . It is used regularly by Tupolev Tu-95 aircraft in military exercises, including one in 1999, in which bombers practice...

 and saw other military construction projects during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 at Tiksi North

Tiksi North

Tiksi North is a noteworthy military airfield in Russia located 41 km north of Tiksi. It is one of several very large airfields that were constructed in the Arctic regions around 1960 to handle Russian strategic bomber deployments, but never saw operational use...

 and Tiksi West

Tiksi West

Tiksi West is a large abandoned airfield in Sakha Republic, Russia located about 10 km west of Tiksi. It appears on old Department of Defense navigation charts, and satellite imagery as of 2000 continues to show patterns of disturbed ground...

 airfields.

History

In August 1901, Russian Arctic ship Zarya

Zarya (polar ship)

Zarya was a steam- and sail-powered brig used by the Russian Academy of Sciences for a polar exploration during 1900–1903.Toward the end of the 19th century, the Russian Academy of Sciences sought to build a general-purpose research vessel for long-term expeditions. The first such Russian...

 headed across the Laptev Sea

Laptev Sea

The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy...

, searching for the legendary Sannikov Land

Sannikov Land

Sannikov Land was a phantom island in the Arctic Ocean. Its supposed existence became something of a myth in 19th-century Russia.Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom claimed to have seen it during their 1809-1810 cartographic expedition to the New Siberian Islands...

 (Zemlya Sannikova) but was soon blocked by floating pack ice in the New Siberian Islands

New Siberian Islands

The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago, located to the North of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha Republic....

. During 1902 the attempts to reach Sannikov Land continued while Zarya was trapped in fast ice. Leaving the ship, Russian Arctic explorer Baron Eduard Toll and three companions vanished forever in November 1902 while travelling away from Bennett Island

Bennett Island

Bennett Island is the largest of the islands of the De Long group in the northern part of the East Siberian Sea. The area of this island is approximately 150 km² ...

 towards the south on loose ice floes.

Zarya was finally moored close to Brusneva Island

Brusneva Island

Brusneva Island , is a small island in the Laptev Sea. It is located off the eastern side of the Lena delta in the Tiksi Bay, only 5 km ENE of Tiksi...

 in the Bay of Tiksi

Tiksi Bay

Tiksi Bay is a 21-km-long bay of the Laptev Sea that cuts into the northern part of the Sakha Republic, Russia. It is up to 17 km wide and has a depth of 2 to 11 meters. The Sogo and Yuryage Rivers discharge into the bay....

 (Bukhta Tiksi), never to leave the place again. The remaining members of the expedition returned to Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, while Captain Matisen

Fyodor Andreyevich Matisen

Fyodor Andreyevich Matisen was a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Navy, hydrographer, and explorer.-The Russian Polar Expedition :...

 went to Yakutsk

Yakutsk

With a subarctic climate , Yakutsk is the coldest city, though not the coldest inhabited place, on Earth. Average monthly temperatures range from in July to in January. The coldest temperatures ever recorded on the planet outside Antarctica occurred in the basin of the Yana River to the northeast...

.

The name Tiksi means "a moorage place" in Sakha language

Sakha language

Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 360,000 native speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts.Sakha is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.-Classification:...

.

Climate