Kanton

Cracked pavement runs down to a lagoon where Pan American clippers once taxied between continents. The runway that followed them stretches empty under seabird sky, and the antennae that tracked Mercury capsules have heard nothing for fifty years. Kanton is the twentieth century written in rust and coral, with one small village still keeping the story company.

Kanton collected an improbable series of tenants. Pan American Airways built its flying-boat base here in 1939, and by 1940 clippers were refuelling in the lagoon on the run to Auckland. The US Army laid a 6,000-foot runway in early 1942, and the island backed the invasion of Tarawa; when long-range airliners made refuelling stops obsolete in 1959, NASA moved in to track Project Mercury, followed by US Air Force space work until 1976. Then everyone left except the I-Kiribati: the 2020 census recorded 41 people, the entire population of the Phoenix Islands. Around them spreads a UNESCO World Heritage seascape of 408,250 square kilometres holding 14 confirmed seamounts and around 800 recorded species. Getting here is expedition work by charter flight or boat, and every visit runs on a PIPA visitor permit naming an approved Kanton host and the community's own agreement; that host is also how the ruins, the lagoon and the village fit together into one story.