and a handful of houses are still maintained for this purpose. As well as a fishing base, the site of the village is still used as an occasional port by Uelen. At the end of summer, storms in the Chukchi Sea can make it impossible for ships to dock at Uelen to unload their supplies. When this occurs, the ships dock at Dezhnevo and the cargo is carried across land to Uelen. In more recent history, Uelen is where Dimitri Kieffer and Karl Bushby entered Russia during their Goliath Expedition after crossing the Bering Strait. The two were then arrested because they had failed to enter the country at a proper port of entry, but their journey was allowed to continue. Demographics The population according to the most recent census results was 740, of whom 368 were male and 352 female. Uelen had a population of 740 at the start of 2009, down from 776 in 2003 (with 595 Chukchi and 72 Yupik.) Other villagers are Russian. Culture The village is famous for its walrus ivory carvings. It has long been a major artistic centre in the region, with Several of the leading exponents of the craft, such as Vukvutagin, Vukvol, Tukkai and Khukhutan working out of Uelen. The Uelen Bone Carving Studio () contains the world's only museum of Walrus ivory carving. In 2004, a successful exhibition of their work was held in Bern, Switzerland and carvers from Uelen took first place in the category Russian hunt: Tradition and Modernity at the third Moscow Exhibition of Russian Crafts. It is also home to an indigenous choir which has a history of cultural collaboration with Inuit across the Bering Strait in Alaska. The writer Yuri Rytkheu was born in Uelen on March 8, 1930, to a family of trappers and hunters. He was the first Chukchi author to achieve national prominence. His book A Dream in Polar Fog deals with the Chukchi people's efforts to adapt when a foreigner is shipwrecked on their shores. The village also serves as a base for archaeology expeditions to the area, which have uncovered a burial ground containing more than 300 burials of Early Whale Hunter cultures, covering a time span from 500 BCE to 1000 CE.These excavations have shown that Uelen was a major settlement in the area in the first few centuries CE, as well as revealing the existence of a culture