File:Tent city and miners on the beaches of Nome, Alaska, circa 1902 (AL+CA 902).jpg

On verso of image: Nome, Alaska, ca. 1902 PH Coll 877.18

Gold discoveries in the Nome area had been reported as far back as 1865 by Western Union surveyors seeking a route across Alaska and the Bering Sea. But it was a $1500-to-the-pan gold strike on tiny Anvil Creek in 1898 by three Scandinavians, Jafet Lindeberg, Erik Lindblom, and John Brynteson, that brought thousands of miners to the "Eldorado." Almost overnight an isolated stretch of tundra fronting the beach was transformed into a tent-and-log cabin city of 20,000 prospectors, gamblers, claim jumpers, saloon keepers, and prostitutes. The gold-bearing creeks had been almost completely staked, when some entrepreneur discovered the "golden sands of Nome." With nothing more than shovels, buckets, rockers and wheel barrows, thousands of idle miners descended upon the beaches. Two months later the golden sands had yielded one million dollars in gold (at $16 an ounce). A narrow-gauge railroad and telephone line from Nome to Anvil Creek was built in 1900. The City of Nome was formed in 1901. By 1902 the more easily reached claims were exhausted and large mining companies with better equipment took over the mining operations. [Source: Alaska Division of Community Advocacy website. http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_BLOCK.cfm?comm_boro_name=Nome&DATA_TYPE=Overview,Economy

• Subjects (LCTGM): Mining camps--Alaska--Nome; Beaches--Alaska--Nome; Tents--Alaska--Nome; Miners--Alaska--Nome