The green outline indicates the area that was exposed during the last Ice Age, the area now known as Beringia or the Bering Land Bridge.

About 12,000 calendar years ago, during the Last Ice Age, the water level of the oceans were lower, exposing land that today is under the Bering and Chukchi Seas. During the glacial epoch this was part of a migration route for people, animals, and plants. Most archeologists agree that it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first passed from Asia to populate the Americas. The Preserve's western boundary lies 42 miles from the Bering Strait and the fishing boundary between the United States and Russia.

Beringia still exists today in the people of Northwest Alaska and the Russian Far East. Though they are separated by water the people of these two areas have common language, traditions and depend on the same environment.