"Bill" Dikeman found gold on Otter Creek, a tributary to the Iditarod River.

News of the find spread, and in the summer of 1909 miners arrived in the gold fields and built a small camp that was later known as Flat.

The steamboat Tanana arrived June 1, 1910, and the city of Iditarod was founded as a head of navigation for all the surrounding gold fields, including Flat, Discovery, Otter, Dikeman, and Willow Creek.

Iditarod quickly became a bustling boomtown, with hotels, cafés, brothels, three newspapers (only one would last the year), a Miners and Merchants Bank, a mercantile store, electricity, telephones, automobiles, and a light railway to Flat.

However, the area was included in the census designated place of Flat beginning in 2000, but with the departure of their remaining residents, the population is now back to zero.