Nome: golden past, glittering future.

• Author: Bohn, Tom
• Position: Nome, Alaska

The state's most famous boomtown is expanding beyond its gold mines to become one of northwest Alaska's most important regional service providers.

Residents of Nome always seem to be shaking gold dust from their feet. While Nomeites still await the first seagoing cargo barge every spring and while everyday routines grind to a halt in March when the first Iditarod sled dog racers come skidding into town, Nome is changing.

Residents are searching, today, for ways to maintain rich histories and traditions while shifting from their economy's long-term mining focus. Minerals exploration efforts continue near the state's premier "gold-rush city," but Nome has emerged as an important service hub for the northwest region, and Nomeites are seeking a renewed image for their hometown.

Incorporated in 1901, Nome is one of the state's oldest cities, and has long been dependent upon the Seward Peninsula's vast mineral wealth. The accidental discovery of the region's rich goldfield in 1898 by the Three Lucky Swedes - Jafe Lindeberg, Erick Lindblom and John Brynteson sparked a flood of gold-hungry explorers. The population ballooned in the century's first decade, and peaked 40,000.

Alaska Natives watched as their homeland was transformed: Elaborate Victorian residences appeared, as did streets and boarded sidewalks. Hospitals, dance halls, churches and Nome's infamous saloons prospered. Records showminers have recovered 4,822,569 troy ounces of gold from the region since 1901, and experts believe millions more remain underground.

But Nome's most sensational gold strikes were almost gone by the 1920s, and the inflated population had already peaked. The raucous boomtown had settled down by the onset of the Second World War. Mining continued as the community's biggest cash concern through the war years. In the 1970s and 1980s, many residents worked in the offshore gold-dredging and in land-dredge mining operations, including those of Alaska Gold Co., which continued running enormous dredges in the nearby thawfields.

Alaska Gold - the last remaining large-scale placer mining operation in Nome - recently moved to less labor-intensive, chemically efficient, pit-mining techniques for extracting gold. The old dinosaur-like dredges now silently rust in their dredge-ponds. And the hundreds of jobs operating hydraulic thawing equipment for those dredges are gone.

Though the larger organizations are slimming down, mining is far from dead in Nome: Many smaller, family-owned operations still yield profitable returns, and Nome receives hundreds of determined prospectors each year. In addition, worldwide minerals giant Kennicott has been actively exploring the Seward Peninsula for the past four years, with company geologists scouring the landscape for lode gold.

Tourism, Transport, Seafood

With mining efforts downsized and large-scale gold dredging all but gone, Nomeites now seek economic diversification. The focus is on tourism and greater involvement in tight, localized niches within Alaska's lucrative fishing industry.

"We have to diversify. There's a lot of potential here and we'll keep trying to light fires under these prospects to...