Map of Shmidtovsky District

The village of Ryrkaipiy

      The village of Ryrkaipiy is situated not far away from the raion center and connects to it by the road of 90 km in length. This is a typical native village mostly populated by Chukchis – marine mammal hunters and reindeer herders. There are 868 villagers in total and 22 are unemployed (as of March 01, 2003).
     For the first time this village was mapped by Joseph Billings. The name of the village means “walrus jam” in the Chukchi language. Indeed, there are a lot of walruses there and they have always been the harvest objects for the native peoples. The village was a central farmstead of the former largest reindeer herding farm in Chukotka that was named “Pioneer” and until now reindeer herding is the main occupation of the villagers. The Chukchis of Shmidt preserve traditions and customs of their ancestors, maintain skills of traditional clothes sewing and technologies of the pasture reindeer herding.
     The village has a post-office, a library, an educational center, a daycare center and center of people’s art with interesting amateur groups: the Theater and Book Union, the Northern Star Native Women’s Club, the drama group, the Native Folklore Ensemble and others.

  The village of Billings 

   The village of Billings is located in 220 km to the northwest from Cape Shmidt. The village is named after Joseph Billings, the researcher of northern seas.
Billings is a small village with the population of 324 but it has a secondary shool and a daycare center, a library, a cultural center – a place where traditional trades develop. In the cultural center the women make marvelous souvenirs out of leather and fur of ringed seals, reindeers, polar foxes and decorate them with mosaic patterns, beadwork and reindeer hair embroidery. 7 people are unemployed (as of March 01, 2003).