Trip to Nome and the Native Villages of Unalakleet, Saint Michael, and Stebbins
So, sometimes my job is very, very cool. Last week I got to travel to a couple of towns along the Norton Sound. It was a unique opportunity as it is unlikely that I will ever get to travel to those places again, except for maybe Nome.
Nome is located on the Seward Peninsula along the Bering Sea facing the Norton Sound. This is a view of Nome with the Sound in the background. It was cloudy every day that we were there, though we heard the day we traveled to the villages it was beautiful.
This is main street or more accurately Front Street. This is where the Iditarod Sled Dog Race and Iron Dog Snowmachine Race finish. Nome is actually known for being a lively place, especially during Iditarod. It is more like a frontier town than a Native village since it came into existence during the gold rush. At one time it had a population of 20,000. Today about 3500 people live in Nome year round.
This is a suction dredge along the beach in Nome. It is designed to go into the water and dredge the bottom of the ocean floor. This is the location of the famous beach where the gold just washed up on shore. Suction dredgers (I wouldn't call them miners) come every summer from all over the world and live on the beach and dredge for gold.
One either side of the public beach for dredging are the beaches owned by the Native Corporations. These beaches have fish camps on them. These camps are used in the summer for subsistence fishing. They catch and dry thousands of fish each summer.
This is me standing near the Bering Sea. It was a little too chilly for me to be stickin' my toes in it.
But we didn't go to Nome to site see. We had to check out some permitted sites (mostly material sites aka gravel pits) along the Teller, Kougarak, and Council Roads. Gravel is big money in Alaska. Nome has three roads that leave from town, each about 75 miles. They do not connect to any other roads in Alaska. This road, the Teller, came with a warning.
It still looked a bit like winter. The tundra has its own kind of beauty.
There are many White Alice Sites all over Alaska. I find them fascinating. They were communication sites built by the Air Force during WWII and were used up until the '70s when the system was replaced with satellite communications. They were often built in very remote locations and were simply abandoned by the military.
These are reindeer. Reindeer were first brought to the Seward Peninsula in 1892 from Siberia. Today 2/3 of the reindeer in Alaska are within the Seward Peninsula. The reindeer are managed by Native reindeer herders.
Musk Ox! I've seen them before on the North Slope, but never so close.
My favorite, the Tundra Daisy.
This was a burial site at Saint Michael. Saint Michael was the northern most outpost for the Russian-American Company. After the Russians left the US military built a post here during the gold rush. It is 95% Native today, but there are still some Russian influences. Note the Russian Orthodox style crosses. Saint Michael has a population of about 350 people, though it has been said that 10,000 people lived here during the gold rush. Today the residents live a primarily subsistence life style, fishing for herring (which they sell for crab bait) and salmon, and herding reindeer. We were there to check barge landings. While the Native Corporations and villages own the uplands, the state has title to the tidelands from ordinary high tide to three miles out. We permit any activities, construction or improvements in the tidelands.
This is a picture of the Native Village of Stebbins, though not necessarily a good picture. It's about 10 miles from Saint Michael. It is also mostly Native and relies on subsistence activities as well. This was probably the original Native Village on Saint Michael Island.
Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of Unalakleet. The village is on a point (or maybe its called a spit) and is suffering severe erosion. Here you can see rock filled Gabions as a temporary revetment. They remind me of Hesco baskets in Iraq. According to the state website, archaeologists have dated house remnants along the beach ridge from 200 B.C. to 300 A.D. The Russian-American Company built a post here in the 1830's. In 1898 reindeer were introduced and in 1901 the US Army built 605 miles of telegraph line between Unalakleet and Saint Michael. You'd need to look at a topo map to really appreciate how amazing that is.
Sometimes living in Fairbanks on the road system, you can forget that there is this vast state out there. I feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to travel to these remote and beautiful places.
