The city is located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea.

Within a year, the area became popular among miners of European descent, who incorporated the city; sending the population to some 10,000.

A series of fires and violent storms destroyed most of Nome's Gold Rush era buildings between 1905 and 1974.

Fierce territory-wide blizzard conditions prevented the delivery of a life-saving diphtheria antitoxin serum by airplane from Anchorage.

A relay of dog sled teams was organized to deliver the serum, which was successfully led by Balto and Togo.

Noted toponymist and historian George R. Stewart favored this explanation, citing a letter from the British Admiralty which allegedly confirmed the story from historical records.

Nome has a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc), closely bordering on a tundra, with long, very cold winters, and short, cool summers.

Even so, Nome is influenced by Far East Russia's cold landmass and as a result the climate is much colder than in coastal Scandinavia at similar latitudes.

In the summer of 1898, the "Three Lucky Swedes": Norwegian-American Jafet Lindeberg, and two naturalized American citizens of Swedish birth, Erik Lindblom and John Brynteson, discovered gold on Anvil Creek.

In that year, gold was found in the beach sands for dozens of miles along the coast at Nome, which spurred the stampede to new heights.

Thousands more people poured into Nome during the spring of 1900 aboard steamships from the ports of Seattle and San Francisco.

McKenzie seized mining claims with an unlawfully procured receivership granted by Judge Noyes.

McKenzie's claim-jumping scheme was eventually stopped by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The similarly-themed Wayne film North to Alaska also takes place in the environs and mentions the town in its theme song.

[36][37] In 1925, Nome was the destination of the famous Great Race of Mercy, in which dog sleds played a large part in transporting diphtheria antitoxin serum through harsh conditions.

In 1973, Nome became the ending point of the 1,049+ mi (1,600+ km) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

During World War II, Nome was the last stop on the ferry system for planes flying from the United States to the Soviet Union for the Lend-lease program.

"[42] The Hope Sled Dog Race was run between Anadyr, Russia, and Nome after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mining's contribution to the town was estimated at $6 million a year in 1990 (~$12.4 million in 2023), before a major increase in the price of gold brought renewed interest to offshore leases (where 1,000,000 ounces of gold were estimated to be in reserve[44]) and a subsequent boom in revenues and employment.

[45] The Discovery Channel has featured 15 seasons of "Bering Sea Gold" concerning offshore efforts to dredge gold both in summer and winter; in the latter season access is gained by making holes in the ice and sending a diver beneath to dredge the sea floor.

The City Dock (south) on the Causeway is equipped with marine headers to handle the community's bulk cargo and fuel deliveries.

The opening between the new breakwater and the Causeway (Outer Harbor Entrance) is approximately 500 feet (150 m) in width and serves as access to both Causeway deep water docks and the new Snake River entrance that leads into the Small Boat Harbor.

The Nome Small Boat Harbor has a depth of 10 feet (MLLW) and offers protected mooring for recreational and fishing vessels alongside two floating docks.

Smaller cargo vessels and landing craft load village freight and fuel at the east, west and south inner harbor sheet pile docks, east beach landing and west barge ramp for delivery in the region.

An addition to the Nome facility in 2005 was a 60-foot-wide (18 m) concrete barge ramp located inside the inner harbor just west of the Snake River entrance.

The ramp provides the bulk cargo carriers with a location closer to the causeway to trans-load freight to landing craft and roll equipment on and off barges.

Local roads lead to Council, the Kougarok River, and Teller: the Nome-Council, Nome-Taylor, and Nome-Teller Highways, respectively.

Johnny Horton wrote the theme song "North to Alaska" for the film of the same name starring John Wayne.

In episode 1 of the 1997 BBC television travel series Full Circle, British actor, comedian, writer and presenter Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) traveled to Nome and met a goldpanner on the "Golden Sands of Nome".

The Great Alaskan Race is a movie (2019) about a group of brave mushers travel over 1100 km to save the small children of Nome, from a deadly epidemic.