Region

McMurdo Station area

The first thing you see when you land at McMurdo is the scale of the logistics required to keep roughly a thousand people alive at the bottom of the world. Fuel tankers. A firehouse. A barbershop. A cafeteria called the galley where scientists and cargo handlers eat side by side. Building 155 runs a long indoor corridor its residents call the highway, and it is, by Antarctic standards, civilization.

McMurdo Station sits on Ross Island, the operational hub of the U.S. Antarctic Program and the closest thing this continent has to a town. From here, field teams fan out toward the Dry Valleys, toward Erebus, toward the Pole itself.

Good to know

Getting here outside of a research contract or work assignment is genuinely difficult. NSF occasionally awards grants to writers and artists; otherwise, access requires a permit through NSF or an approved operator. Flights leave from Christchurch on military cargo planes — eight hours in a Lockheed C-130. The summer window runs roughly October through February.

The story

How McMurdo Station area came to be

The U.S. Navy Seabees broke ground in December 1955, and by 1956 McMurdo was operational as Naval Air Facility McMurdo — a forward base for Operation Deep Freeze. It served as the logistical spine of the International Geophysical Year (1957–58), when coordinated science across dozens of nations briefly made Antarctica a place of unusual international cooperation. The Navy renamed it simply McMurdo in 1961, ran a nuclear reactor on-site from 1962 until 1972, then handed control to the National Science Foundation in 1993.

The past is not abstract here. Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Hut, built in 1902, still stands at Hut Point beside the harbor. On Observation Hill above the station, a memorial cross was raised in 1913 to Scott and the men who did not return from the Pole.

People & landmarks

Who and what shaped it

People who shaped it

Mary Alice McWhinnie

First woman to winter over at McMurdo (April–October 1974); pioneered female participation in Antarctic Research Program from 1962.

Mary Odile Cahoon

Second woman to winter over at McMurdo alongside McWhinnie (April–October 1974).

Admiral George J. Dufek

Visited McMurdo on November 28, 1957, with U.S. congressional delegation for change-of-command ceremony during International Geophysical Year.

Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo

Scottish naval officer and polar explorer after whom McMurdo Sound and the station are named.

Landmark buildings

Building 155

Main hub with indoor corridor called 'highway'; contains offices, dorms, barbershop, computer lab, station store, and main cafeteria.

A. P. Crary Science and Engineering Center

Laboratory and research facility with saltwater aquarium; construction started late 1980s.

Chapel of the Snows

Interfaith church dedicated 1989 (replaced previous chapel that burned in 1978); hosts Protestant and Catholic services.

Discovery Hut

Built 1902 by Robert Falcon Scott; still standing at Hut Point adjacent to harbor.

Memorial cross on Observation Hill

Erected 1913 to Captain Scott and South Pole team members who did not return from the Pole.

Richard E. Byrd memorial

Established 1965 at McMurdo Station.

Practical

Plan your visit

On the map

When to go

Summer (October to February) brings continuous daylight and temperatures that can climb to 8°C — cold enough to require serious layers, mild enough to work outside. Winter drops the population below 200 and the thermometer to -50°C, with roughly four months of polar night during which no flights move in or out.

Right now

⛅

-30°C

Partly cloudy

Sat

❄️

-26°

-33°

Sun

❄️

-22°

-28°

Mon

❄️

-17°

-24°

Tue

⛅

-20°