sonora2sonoma

After I’d been in Nome for several weeks, the sun was setting noticeably earlier than it had been when I’d arrived. I was really struck by how much the days had grown shorter when, just before Halloween, I watched the moon rise over town in the dark of night at 3:30 in the afternoon.

These things—the Northern Lights, the freezing sea, the shortened days, all conspired in convincing me of the exotic nature of the place I’d come to visit and helped me to realize that I’d embarked on an adventure like none other I’d been on before.

Although far from the oil fields of the North Slope, the energy accompanying the prosperity commensurate with job creation of the scale on display on the North Slope created a sort of background hum that seemed to permeate the environs, producing in me an almost palpable sensation. This only served to augment the frontier feel of Nome, which I found exhilarating, for it truly was a frontier—one of the last remaining outposts in the westward expansion of a people always on the lookout for the next big strike, an over-the-rainbow bonanza-fantasy belief structure more akin to a dream whose success stories have always been dwarfed by its numbers of shattered illusions.

With an urgency not unlike that of Spring’s fitful blossoming, the perennial call of gold has turned out, for most of those who’ve answered it, to be an itch no amount of scratching could ever relieve.  

Still, that has never dissuaded the hordes of hopefuls who immodestly answered its call from throwing in their lots, for better or worse. Not even Wyatt Earp, history tells us, was immune to the lure of “riches for the taking.”

Without the Gold Rush of 1898, in fact, the settlement of Nome would likely never have occurred.  The town isn’t situated in a sensible location, lacking as it does a port or any physical features that might provide shelter from the harsh winds constantly blowing in off the Bering Sea. The wind is so disagreeable even the mosquitos avoid it, providing humans respite from the constant onslaught of the blood-seeking creatures ubiquitous a few miles inland.

The Eskimos had the good sense to locate their villages where the topography provided relief from the merciless weather, or afforded access to waterways or good hunting grounds.  There was nothing of the sort in Nome.  

The town sat right at the water’s edge on a coastal plain that extended several miles inland before the elevation rose up to a series of low-lying hills. Consequently, there was little protection from the elements until a massive sea wall was constructed to keep the sea from further ravaging the town like it had in the 50s when a particularly large storm surge resulted in the relocation of some of its buildings.

As the diggings played out and the miners moved on, many communities withered and died like Autumn leaves. One could still see, when I was there, remnants scattered about the outlying tundra—sections of water pipe, stays made of redwood, left over from the earlier mining operations. Owing to the extreme dryness of the region, desert-like in its ability to preserve, these relics exhibited little signs of aging save redwood’s customary greyish patina.

Communities like Nome survived the miners’ exodus because they had other resources available to sustain them. Their ability to adapt to changing circumstances allowed them to remain not only viable, but also prosperous, even after the initial attraction dimmed.

But in Nome’s case, even decades after the gold rush, the gold hadn’t run out.

There were still individual prospectors eking out a living, however meager, operating sluices on the flat plain extending several miles inland from the coast. The truly profitable diggings, however, were reachable only by the big operations being run by corporations, notably a couple of large dredging operation on the coastal plain as well as another floating dredge anchored a couple of miles offshore.

Tim Konrad

(To be continued . . )