Showing 1-7 of 7 results
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Anvil Mountain
The climb up 1062ft Anvil Mountain is the closest hike to Nome and the only one that can be easily pulled off without a car. Follow the Teller Hwy 3.5 miles from town to Glacier Creek Rd, which takes you directly onto the mountain. After the road veers left, look for a smooth route up the slope and commence your climb. It's about one mile round-trip to the summit, ascending through wonderful wildflower patches.
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Bering Land Bridge Interpretive Center
The center is dedicated to Beringia, the 1000-mile-wide landmass that linked Alaska and Siberia until about 10,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe that the first people to arrive in Alaska, along with a variety of animals, used this land bridge. The center has displays on mammoths, early Alaska Native culture and reindeer herding, and a collection of short videos that are shown on request.
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Carrie McLain Museum
To the east of the visitors center on Front St is Carrie McLain Museum in the basement of the Kegoayah Kozga Public Library. Though there are displays on Native culture and local reindeer-cultivation efforts, the focus is the gold rush and Nome's history in the early 20th century. Don't miss the preserved body of Fritz the sled dog, one of the leaders of the famed 1925 race to deliver diphtheria serum to Nome, which was the inspiration for the Iditarod.
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Donald Perkins Memorial Plaza
Overlooking the seawall, is the Donald Perkins Memorial Plaza, featuring a collection of old mining detritus, including dredge buckets. During Nome's golden heyday there were more than 100 gold dredges in the area, and each one had hundreds of these buckets to scoop up gravel and dirt. Today you'll see the buckets all over town, often used as giant flowerpots. On the seawall near the plaza is a wooden platform that provides views of the Bering Sea and Sledge Island.
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Golden Sands Beach
A very interesting afternoon can be spent at Nome's Golden Sands Beach , stretching a mile east of town along Front St. At the height of summer a few local children may be seen playing in the 45°F water, and on Memorial Day (in May), more than 100 masochistic residents plunge into the ice-choked waters for the annual Polar Bear Swim.
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Iditarod Finish-Line Arch
In a lot next to the city hall is the Iditarod Finish-Line Arch. The huge wooden structure, a distinctly bent pine tree with burls, is raised over Front St every March in anticipation of the mushers and their dogsled teams ending the 1049-mile race here. The original arch fell apart after the 1999 race, and Nome, in a basically treeless region, sent out a call for help throughout the state to find a new one. The present pine was located near Hope, on the Kenai Peninsula.
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St Joseph Church
Built in 190, when there were 30,000 people living in Nome, this huge church was originally located on Front St, and the electrically lit cross at the top of the building was used as a beacon for seamen. By the 1920s the population of the city had plummeted to less than 900 and the Jesuits abandoned the structure.
Showing 1-7 of 7 results
