Nome

Nome, city, western Alaska, United States. A port on the Bering Sea’s Norton Sound, the city is situated on the southern shore of Seward Peninsula. It is some 540 miles (870 km) northwest of Anchorage and 160 miles (260 km) east of the U.S.-Russian border. Before European contact the area had been inhabited solely by Inuit peoples. The September 1898 discovery of gulch gold at nearby Anvil Creek resulted in a remarkable mining stampede. The miners’ camp, known as Anvil City, by 1900 had an estimated population of 20,000, though the population had decreased dramatically by 1903, as easily accessible claims were exhausted, and had dropped to 852 by 1920 (the decline was also accelerated by a devastating influenza outbreak in 1918). The settlement was soon renamed for Cape Nome, as given on a chart dated 1849 and said to be a British naval draftsman’s misinterpretation of the query “?Name.”

Much of the city was destroyed by a fire in 1934. During World War II Nome was a way station for American-made planes being shipped to the Soviet Union as part of the lend-lease program. Gold mining remained the chief occupation until the dredge fields were closed in 1962. Transportation, tourism, fishing, reindeer herding, and Inuit handicrafts are now the economic mainstays. Nome is served by airlines, freight steamers (in summer), and roads radiating into the tundra. The city’s Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum features gold-rush-era artifacts and Inuit art. Nome is also the destination city for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race (March), which begins in Anchorage; the path follows a route taken in the winter of 1925 when mushers raced serum from Anchorage to Nome to stop the spread of a diphtheria epidemic. North of the city is Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. In 2020 Nome had a population of 3,699.