The human history of Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve stretches back more than 10,000 years. The earliest people to settle the Brooks Range were among the first to cross the Bering Land Bridge from Asia in a series migrations that eventually populated the Americas. Archeological sites show that ancestors of Inupiaq and Athabascan peoples hunted caribou, moose, and sheep; trapped and snared small game; pulled fish from lakes and streams; and used the area’s other natural resources to survive in a difficult environment. Today, descendents of these early hunters and gatherers live in and around the park, where they continue traditional subsistence activities while also adapting to the demands of modern life.

People of European descent first found their way to the Brooks Range in the 1880s, almost two decades after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. Military explorers, gold prospectors, and government scientists helped to fill in what had been a large blank space on American maps. In 1929, these blank spaces drew noted wilderness advocate Robert Marshall to the Brooks Range. Seeking empty spaces, he found instead a complex world of miners, trappers, local indigenous people, and breathtaking vistas. Marshall’s descriptions of the peaks he called the "Gates of the Arctic" and his enthusiasm for wilderness protection inspired later wilderness advocates to select a vast swath of the central Brooks Range to be Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.