Case file · Sacred site
Church of the Holy Ascension, Unalaska
Father Ioann Veniaminov, later St. Innocent of Alaska, arrived on Unalaska in 1824 and with Unangan (Aleut) parishioners built the first church on this site in 1825-26; the present church dates from the 1890s.
1825 CE · 53.88, -166.54 · status: official
The account
Veniaminov devised a writing system for the Unangan language, translated scripture into it and wrote an ethnography of the islands. The church is the oldest standing cruciform Russian Orthodox church in the United States and a National Historic Landmark.