Howland Island

Howland Island is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about 3,100 km (1,670 nm) southwest of Honolulu. It is almost half way between Hawaii and Australia and is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States. For statistical purposes, Howland is sometimes grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The island was named after a lookout who sighted it from the whaling ship Isabella on September 9, 1842, however the first recorded European sighting had already been made 20 years earlier from the whaler Oeno on December 1, 1828 and it was briefly called Worth Island after that ship's captain.

Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge consists of the 455 acre (1.84 km²) island and the surrounding 32,074 acres (130 km²) of submerged land. The island is now a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an insular area under the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The atoll has no economic activity and is perhaps best known as the island Amelia Earhart never reached. Defense is the responsibility of the United States and the island is visited every two years by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.