Geography
The cape is the eastern tip of a high, rocky headland, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from Uelen in the north to Cape Pe'ek in the south, connected to the mainland by a neck of lower-lying land peppered with swamps and shallow lakes. That low-lying land is so low in elevation that the cape appears as an island from a distance far to the south of it. The US Hydrographic Office publication Asiatic Pilot from 1909 gives the height of the headland as 2,521 feet (768 m), and the US Office of Coast Survey chart of 2000 shows the highest peak at 2,638 feet (804 m). The headland and the neck of low-lying land together form a peninsula. In 1898, the cape was officially renamed as Cape Dezhnev, replacing Captain James Cook's name, the "East Cape". It was named in honor of Semyon Dezhnyov, the first recorded European to round its tip (in 1648). There is a large monument to Dezhnev on the seacoast.
The Great Circle distance from Cape Dezhnev to the shore of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait in Yemen is about 10,855 km, which is the longest land distance of Asia.
Read more about this topic: Cape Dezhnev
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