First Avenue in the town of Iditarod around its peak in 1911. (Lomen Brothers Photo | University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives)

First Avenue in the town of Iditarod around its peak in 1911. (Lomen Brothers Photo | University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives)

Iditarod represents one of the last Gold Rush towns

A century ago, for a few years, it was the largest city in the Interior

The mushers were gone, and so were the 640 dogs that pulled them out of town. A few days earlier, the volunteers who gave life to Iditarod had climbed into their single-engine planes and lifted off the ice, carrying their noise along with them.

Iditarod City was now quiet, except for the whoosh of ravens scanning for frozen morsels in piles of straw. And (Could it be? Yes!) the melancholy howls of a half-dozen wolves, wafting from the derelict buildings 100 yards across the slough.

Iditarod is a lonely place. A century ago, for a few years it was the largest city in Interior Alaska.

A few weeks ago, Bob Gillis and I were the only humans in town, having skied and tundra-walked to Iditarod from the village of McGrath. Moving along on the Iditarod Trail, we had not seen anyone else in four days. It would be three more days before we did, in the village of Shageluk, 60 miles away.

[Here’s where Alaska’s oldest rock was found]

Trying to figure out Iditarod’s story while we were there was like trying to imagine someone’s life by visiting a cemetery. We put the pieces together later, with help from “Iditarod: Portrait of an Alaska Gold Rush Community,” the detailed 1988 Ph.D. thesis of University of Northern Arizona student Billy Mackey.

A travel trunk on the tundra in the ghost town of Iditarod. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

A travel trunk on the tundra in the ghost town of Iditarod. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

Iditarod got its start after two prospectors found gold at nearby Otter Creek on Christmas day, 1908. The first steamship to reach the site of Iditarod arrived from Fairbanks. The Tanana made the 1,000-mile trip via the Chena, Tanana, Yukon, Innoko and Iditarod rivers in June, 1910. Ships only made it to Iditarod during high-water periods, like snow-melt time in May and June.

At its peak in September 1910, Iditarod was home to 2,500 people. It was a mature Gold Rush town; many people there had lived through other stampedes. Unlike other boom towns, there was only one recorded murder and one robbery there.

[Alaska Native wins Iditarod sled dog race]

There were no gold mines at Iditarod. Like Fairbanks, the town was the supply and commerce center for nearby diggings. In Iditarod’s case, these were on Flat and Otter creeks.

The Iditarod River and the town’s famous name is “probably an English distortion by prospectors of the name of an Indian village” on the river, wrote Donald Orth in Alaska Place Names.

Its uplands fringed with young birch trees, Iditarod is surrounded by tundra. The few buildings left in the town, each now resembling a house of cards frozen in the act of falling, are made of milled lumber rather than spruce logs. The wood for construction came from very far away.

A vault with walls two feet thick that was inside an Iditarod bank. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

A vault with walls two feet thick that was inside an Iditarod bank. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

Founded late in the Gold Rush, when almost all the other booms in Alaska had busted, Iditarod was born in an era of technological advances, a few of which later turned it into a ghost town.

During its brief peak in 1910, the town hosted six hotels, six lawyers, six clothing stores, six building-supply stores, three furniture stores, two banks and telephone service to nearby mining camps that was available for $30 monthly. There was also a horse-pulled tramway on wooden rails that led eight miles to the town of Flat.

[Dry, hot weather bring consequences to Southeast]

Walking around Iditarod, Bob and I ducked into the leaning warehouse for the Northern Commercial Company. On one wall was a yellowed steamer schedule, showing when ships like the Tanana from Fairbanks might arrive, if everything went right.

One hundred feet from the warehouse is a bizarre sight so far from civilization: A concrete vault the size of a garden shed. Its walls are two feet thick. Its two metal doors have combination dials that no longer spin. The framework of the Miners and Merchants Bank has fallen down around the vault, which will probably be the most enduring artifact in Iditarod.

A few fortunes passed through that safe. In November 1920, officials with the bank sent a shipment of gold weighing 2,600 pounds out on the newly completed Seward-to-Nome Trail. They wanted to see if moving gold by dog sleds to Seward was practical. It was, and $3 million worth of gold slid over the trail during the next decade. The trail became known as the Iditarod Trail, because that’s where all the money was coming from.

Walking on the hardened snow crust, Bob and I guessed one of the largest collapsing structures, with its bedframes and flowered canvas wall coverings, was a roadhouse. In his thesis, Mackey identifies it as Mitchell’s Hotel. Joe Mitchell was one of only three people who remained in Iditarod by the year 1930.

The Mitchell Hotel in Iditarod, where travelers slept in the early decades of the 1900s. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

The Mitchell Hotel in Iditarod, where travelers slept in the early decades of the 1900s. (Courtesy Photo | Ned Rozell)

What happened to Iditarod?

The town’s decline began when the Guggenheim-owned Yukon Gold Company purchased most of the claims in Flat. Company executives shipped dredges from the Klondike to Flat. The huge gold-digging machines required many fewer men to operate.

As people left the town, the new construction of the Alaska Railroad drew a few businessmen to what would become Anchorage. Z.J. Loussac, who owned a drug store in Iditarod, later became mayor of Anchorage.

The arrival of the first airplane on a landing strip at Flat in the mid 1920s also hastened Iditarod’s end. Miners at Flat had created the airstrip by smoothing out gravel tailing piles. Iditarod, surrounded by swamp, had no spot for a plane to land. Suddenly, lighter things like food could arrive in Flat from Fairbanks or Anchorage in hours instead of the weeks they took by river or trail.

The miners themselves might have helped seal Iditarod’s fate. By dumping rock tailings and dirt into the Iditarod River upstream of the town, they introduced an incredible amount of silt to the river. This may have been the cause of the shifting of the river channel away from Iditarod, which got cut off and now fronts a buggy backwater slough.

By the 1920s and 1930s, miners moved many Iditarod buildings to Flat. The Northern Commercial Company kept a store in Iditarod, run by Joe Mitchell, who had owned the hotel. When company shareholders closed the store in 1951, Mitchell left Iditarod, catching a plane out of Flat. As the plane flew over Iditarod, Mitchell looked down on empty streets and buildings leaning into the tundra.


• Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell (ned.rozell@alaska.edu) is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.


More in News

Jasmine Chavez, a crew member aboard the Quantum of the Seas cruise ship, waves to her family during a cell phone conversation after disembarking from the ship at Marine Park on May 10. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire file photo)
Ships in port for the week of Sept. 28

Here’s what to expect this week.

Republican challenger Nick Begich III and Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola are on the stage at the beginning of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s candidate forum on Aug. 28, 2024. (Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska’s U.S. House candidates face each other three times in three days this week

Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, and her leading challenger, Republican U.S. House candidate… Continue reading

(Michael Penn / Juneau Empire file photo)
Police calls for Friday, Oct. 4, 2024

This report contains public information from law enforcement and public safety agencies.

(Michael Penn / Juneau Empire file photo)
Police calls for Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024

This report contains public information from law enforcement and public safety agencies.

An early voting station is set up in the atrium of the State Office Building on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, the first day of early voting for the 2024 Alaska primary election. (James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska records show no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting or registration

Trump and in-state Republicans have falsely claimed that noncitizens are voting in large numbers.

Four businesses and four apartments in a building owned by Mike Ward burn on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Haines. It’s not yet clear exactly how the fire started, but Ward and others on the scene said it appeared to have been set in one of the apartments. (Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News)
Building fire destroys four businesses and four apartments in Haines

“I feel like I’m losing part of my life here,” Haines Quick Shop owner Mike Ward says.

A person seen at an entrance sign to the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area is being sought by the Juneau Police Department following several instances of swastikas being spray painted at locations in the Mendenhall Valley in recent days. (Juneau Police Department)
Man sought following multiple incidents of swastika graffiti in the Mendenhall Valley

Several incidents of swastikas being spray painted at locations in the Mendenhall… Continue reading

The Alaska State Museum is seen in the fall sun on Wednesday. (Claire Stremple/Alaska Beacon)
Grant increases museum access for Alaska Native artists and culture bearers

The Access to Alaska Native Collections grant is part of a broader movement.

A dropoff box for ballots at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library. (Laurie Craig / Juneau Empire file photo)
Updated election results show no change as turnout surpasses last year’s total vote

Ballots from 34.27% of voters tallied as of Friday, final results expected Oct 15; last year’s total 33.98%.

Most Read