Nome

About Nome

Nome is an Arctic-coast Alaskan town on the Bering Sea, just south of the Arctic Circle. Expedition ships tender passengers to a gold-rush-era main street of low wooden buildings — Nome is the finish line of the Iditarod and a working mining town. Excursions focus on muskox and reindeer drives along the Council Road and visits to the old gold dredges rusting on the tundra. Calls are expedition-scale and weather-dependent.

• Nome's 1898 gold rush — triggered when three Scandinavian prospectors found gold on the beach — briefly made it Alaska's most populous city, topping 10,000 residents within a year of discovery.
• Nome has no harbor; cruise ships must anchor offshore and tender passengers to the beach, as the Bering Sea coast is too shallow and exposed for a traditional port.
• In the winter of 1925, Nome was the endpoint of the famous Serum Run: a relay of 20 sled-dog mushers and 150 dogs traveled over 674 miles through blizzard conditions to deliver diphtheria antitoxin, a feat memorialized today by the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
• Nome sits on the southern Seward Peninsula coast along Norton Sound, making it one of the westernmost communities in North America — closer to Russia than to Anchorage.
• Gold mining remains Nome's economic backbone in the 21st century, now largely conducted offshore with suction dredges, and the city claims to be home to the world's largest gold pan.