Canada
Devon Island occupies a singular position in the geography of superlatives: it is the largest uninhabited island on Earth. Spanning 55,247 square kilometres — roughly the size of Croatia — this Arctic landmass in Nunavut's Qikiqtaaluk Region supports no permanent human population, a fact that becomes immediately comprehensible upon encountering its landscape of ice caps, polar desert, and impact craters that NASA has used as a Mars analogue for two decades. Devon Island is not merely remote; it is a place where the very concept of habitability is tested and found wanting.
The island's defining feature is its ice cap, which covers the eastern third of the landmass in a dome of permanent ice up to 600 metres thick. From this frozen reservoir, glaciers flow outward in every direction, some reaching the sea as tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into the surrounding channels. The western portion of the island is characterized by polar desert — a landscape of barren rock, frost-shattered gravel, and sparse tundra vegetation that receives less precipitation than the Sahara. The Haughton impact crater, a 23-kilometre-wide depression created by a meteorite strike 39 million years ago, has been the site of NASA's Haughton-Mars Project since 1997.
There are no services of any kind on Devon Island. Expedition ships provide all necessities, and landings — typically by Zodiac at Dundas Harbour on the southern coast or at locations determined by ice and weather conditions — deliver visitors to a landscape where the absence of human presence is physical and absolute. The silence of Devon Island is of a quality rarely experienced anywhere on Earth — no traffic, no aircraft, no machinery, no habitation. The only sounds are wind, water, ice, and the occasional call of a bird or bark of a seal.
Despite its apparent inhospitality, Devon Island supports significant wildlife populations. Muskoxen, their shaggy coats seemingly unchanged since the Pleistocene, graze the sparse tundra in herds that can number several dozen. Arctic hares congregate on the hillsides in groups that sometimes exceed a hundred individuals. Polar bears traverse the coastline and ice edges, and the surrounding waters host narwhals, belugas, walruses, and ringed seals. The cliff faces along the southern coast provide nesting sites for thick-billed murres and other Arctic seabirds.
Devon Island is visited by expedition cruise ships on Northwest Passage and High Arctic itineraries, typically from late July through early September. The most commonly visited location is Dundas Harbour, on the southern coast, where the ruins of a 1920s RCMP post and Inuit relocation settlement provide historical context. Ice conditions vary dramatically between years and even between weeks, and no visit to Devon Island can be guaranteed. This uncertainty — the genuine possibility that nature will simply deny access — is part of what makes reaching this island one of expedition travel's most authentic achievements.