To the Nome district have been gradually added those of Topkuk, Solomon, and Golovin Bay, forty-five miles to eastward on the shores of Norton Sound, Cripple Creek, Bluff, Penny, and a chain of diggings extending up the coast and into the Kotzebue country, including the rich Kougarok and Blue Stone districts, Candle Creek, and Kowak River.
When gold was discovered at Nome, prospectors scattered over the Seward Peninsula in all directions. Some drifted west into the York district, near Cape Prince of Wales, the extreme western point of the North American continent. In this region they found gold in the streams, but sluicing was so difficult, owing to a heavy gravel which they encountered, that they abandoned their claims, not knowing that the impediment was stream-tin. Wiser prospectors later recognized the metal and located claims. The tin is irregularly distributed over an area of four hundred and fifty square miles, embracing the western end of the peninsula. The United States uses annually twenty million dollars' worth of tin, which is obtained largely from the Straits Settlement, although much comes from Ecuador, Bolivia, Australia, and Cornwall. Tin cannot at present be treated successfully in this country, owing to the lack of smelter facilities; but now that it has been discovered in so vast quantities and of so pure quality in the Seward Peninsula, smelters in this country will doubtless be equipped for reducing tin ores.
The centre of the tin-mining industry is at Tin City, a small settlement three miles west of Teller, Cape Prince of Wales, and is reached by small steamers which ply from Nome. Several corporations are developing promising properties with large stamp-mills. Both stream-tin and tin ore in ledges are found throughout the district.
The Council district is the oldest of Seward Peninsula, the first discovery of gold having been made there in 1898, by a party headed by Daniel P. Libby, who had been through the country with the Western Union's Expedition in 1866. Hearing of the Klondike's richness, he returned to Seward Peninsula and soon found gold on Fish River. He and his party established the town of Council and built the first residence; it now has a population of eight hundred. This district is forestated with spruce of fair size and quality.
The Ophir Creek Mines are of great value, having produced more than five millions of dollars by the crudest of mining methods. The Kougarok is the famous district of the interior of the peninsula. Mary's Igloo—deriving its name from an Eskimo woman of some importance in early days—is the seat of the recorder's office for this district. It has a post-office and is an important station. May it never change its striking and picturesque name!
The entire peninsula, having an area of nearly twenty-three thousand miles, is liable to prove to be one vast gold-mine, the extreme richness of strikes in various localities indicating that time and money to install modern machinery and develop the country are all that are required to make this one of the richest producing districts of the world.
The leading towns of the peninsula are Council, Solomon, Teller, Candle, Mary's Igloo, and Deering, on Kotzebue Sound. Solomon is on Norton Sound, at the mouth of Solomon River; a railroad runs from this point to Council.
The early name of Seward Peninsula was Kaviak—the name of the Innuit people inhabiting it.
Gold was discovered on Anvil Creek in the hills behind Nome in September, 1898, by Jafet Lindeberg, Erik Lindblom, and John Brynteson, the "three lucky Swedes." In the following summer gold was discovered on the beach, and in 1900 occurred the memorable stampede to Nome, when fifteen thousand people struggled through the surf during one fortnight. Then began the amazing building of the mining-camp on the northwesternmost point of the continent. Anvil Creek, Dexter, Dry and Glacier creeks, Snow and Cooper gulches, have yielded millions of dollars. The tundra reaching back to the hills five or six miles from the sea is made up of a series of beach lines, all containing deposits of gold. Five millions of dollars in dust were taken from the famous "third" beach line in one season; and its length is estimated at thirty or forty miles. The hills are low and round-topped, and beyond them—thirty miles distant—are the Kigluaik Mountains, known to prospectors by the name of Sawtooth. Among their sharp and austere peaks is the highest of the peninsula, rising to an altitude of four thousand seven hundred feet by geological survey.
There are several railroads on the peninsula. Some are but a few miles in length, the rails are narrow and "wavy," the trains run by starts and plunges and stop fearsomely; but they are railroads. One can climb into the box-cars or the one warm passenger-coach and go from Nome out among the creeks,—to Nome River, to Anvil Creek, to Kougarok and Hot Springs, from Solomon to the Council Country,—and Nome is only ten years old.