Baker Island is a very small Island located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is an atoll located just north of the equator. Located in the Central Pacific Ocean, it is approximately 1,920 southwest of Honolulu, located in Hawaii. The island is almost perfectly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The closest neighbor is called Howland Island, which is located approximately 42 miles to the northwest. While Baker Island has been claimed by the United States since 1857, there are other countries, such as the United Kingdom, that have claimed it intermittently since that time.
Technically, Baker Island is not inhabited by anybody. It is a part of the Baker Island National Wildlife Refuge. It is unincorporated and unorganized territory, according to the United States. The United States is responsible for the defense of the island. It is visited from time to time by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Baker Island is typically grouped with the United States Minor Outlying Islands, but nobody lives on Baker Island.
The island is only approximately 0.81 square miles in size. It has approximately 3.0 miles of coastline. It has an equatorial climate, meaning that it is very warm throughout the year. It is constantly windy, it does not receive a lot of rain, and the sun is shining during the entire year. Because it is such a small island, virtually the entire island is located at sea level. There is a coral reef in the area, where a lot of unique plants and animals can be found.
It is unclear who the first person was to discover the island, but the first modern person to discover the island was Captain Elijah Folder. He was the captain of a Nantucket whaling ship, called the Equator, and he dubbed the island New Nantucket. He discovered it in 1818. The island itself was also sighted by several other ships during the next few years. These sightings took place in 1825, 1832, 1839, and 1855. Then, the United States government officially took control of the island in 1857. It had some mineral deposits that were mined by American companies for several years, and most of the people who worked in the mines were native to the Pacific Islands that were nearby.
Right now, the US military does not have a constant presence on Baker Island. During WWII, the island had an air base that was constructed in 1943. It acted as a staging base for United States bombers who were attacking Japanese positions in the area. At the end of WWII, the island was officially abandoned; however, the airfield has not been active since the start of 1944, as the United States pushed the Japanese far from the airfield, rendering it useless.