Much of the gold was lying in the beach sand of the landing place and could be recovered without any need for a claim.

In the 18th century, they established the port of St. Michael, 125 miles (201 km) to the southeast, for sailing on the Yukon River.

[2] Gold was found in smaller amounts at Council 1897, the year before Nome, and subsequently other places in the area.

[3] In September 1898, the "Three Lucky Swedes": Norwegian-American Jafet Lindeberg, and two American citizens of Swedish birth, Erik Lindblom and John Brynteson, discovered gold on Anvil Creek and founded Nome mining district.

[5] 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.

[n 1] More gold seekers from the distant city of Adelaide, Australia set out for Nome aboard the schooner Inca in 1902.

One of these, Alexander McKenzie, a Republican from North Dakota, took interest in the gold rush and seized mining claims with the help of a crooked judge, Arthur H.

[8] Mckenzie's claim-jumping scheme was eventually stopped by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; however, the episode provided the plot for Rex Beach's best-selling novel The Spoilers (1906), which was made into a stage play and movies, most famously The Spoilers (1942) starring John Wayne.

[8] The mining of Nome beach is a good example of gold rushes going through phases of increasing use of machinery and capital.

The mining methods used were extensive meaning that the amount of soil processed was more important than the efficiency of the equipment that separated gold from sand.

[citation needed] By 1905 Nome had schools, churches, newspapers, a hospital, saloons, stores, and a post office,[14] an electric light plant[15] and other businesses.

In 1904 the first wireless telegraph in the United States to transmit over a distance of more than 100 miles began operating in Nome.

[29] A well-known prospector, Swiftwater Bill, made a fortune in both Klondike and Nome, but lost everything just as quickly.

For them, the gold rush meant a drastic reduction in moose, caribou, and small game as prospectors hunted these for food.

The fourth site is a 0.6-mile (0.97 km) stretch of the beach on the eastern edge of the city, extending from the seawall to East Limit Road.

As mentioned earlier, there was an overlap of prospectors between Klondike and Nome and, finally, the two rushes shared some of the same routes.

Apart from the novel and the films The Spoilers filmed in 1955 with Jeff Chandler, 1942 with John Wayne, 1930 with Gary Cooper, and 1914 with William Farnum, and also North to Alaska (1960 comedy, starring John Wayne as well and also known for its theme song) is set in Nome during the rush.