Western Region: Bethel, Nome & Wade Hampton census areas.

• Author: Hill, Robin Mackey
• Position: Western Alaska

Jeannie Wooderson measures success in seemingly small ways. "If we create one or two jobs in a village we've done a great job," says the executive director of the non-profit Kuskokwim Economic Development Council. "It does get frustrating in that we're trying so hard, but there are milestones. One thing about living out here is that you have to be creative."

Wooderson and her colleagues at the Lower Kuskokwim, Lower Yukon and Bering Straits economic development councils say they have their work cut out for them trying to foster economic development in the most impoverished area of the state. "Just having safe drinking water, that's something no one (outside the Bush) ever thinks about," says Carl Berger, executive director of the Bethel-based Lower Kuskokwim Economic Development Council.

The council is a regional, non-profit organization that helps pull the pieces of economic development together. Berger says that mission is particularly challenging in an area where basic infrastructure is so lacking. "It's difficult to promote economic development when you don't have such basic things in place," he says. Safe drinking water is just one example.

Still, there's plenty going on in the western region of the state, an area plagued by raging unemployment, high living costs, few wage-paying jobs and a lack of investment capital. Berger, for example, is talking with an Amsterdam fish buyer who's interested in local fish for sales to established European markets.

The Dutch businessman also is considering setting up small, local, state-of-the-art processing facilities to smoke salmon and halibut on a year-around basis. Among other efforts of Berger and the council are launching a Native arts-and-crafts cooperative, meeting with state tourism officials about tourism development and helping individual villages determine what types of businesses they need and could support.

Up the way in Aniak, Wooderson and her colleagues also are starting a Native arts-and-crafts co-op, and they're working to develop a gravel quarry outside of Upper and Lower Kalskag that would supply gravel for regional roadways, runways and construction projects. Villagers in Russian Mission are trying to start a community farm from which to market local produce and berries, while villagers in Stony River hope to open an inn and those in Sleetmute are trying to establish a small coffee shop and overnight lodging.

Light manufacturing is the key to creating sorely-needed, cash-paying jobs along the Seward Peninsula, says Dazee, executive director of the Bering Straits Economic Council. Items that could be marketed include reindeer-hide slippers, vests and billfolds and Alaska food items, such as sourdough mix and berry products.

Other economic development possibilities in the region include opening a small store and guide service in White Mountain, starting a small-machine repair shop in Unalakleet and marketing gravel mined at Cape Nome to the Japanese. Area reindeer herders are working to start slaughter facilities on the peninsula, and a reindeer tanning operation in Shishmaref is up and running.

"We have our work cut out for us," says Berger of the challenges he and his colleagues face. But, he adds, "that's not to say we can't do economic development out here, because I think we can. People out here are pretty upbeat."

HISTORY

The western region of Alaska stretches from the Seward Peninsula down along the Bering Sea Coast and around Norton Sound to include Emmonak, St. Mary's, Nunivak Island and Bethel. Archaeologists generally agree that the area's earliest inhabitants crossed the miles-wide Bering Land Bridge from Asia as long ago as 8,000 to 10,000 years, although some claim the migration began much earlier.

Waves of inhabitants followed, with the ancestors of modern-day Eskimos appearing in the area around 500 A.D. The people were hunter-gatherers with a profound respect for the land and the riches it provided.

In 1728, Vitus Bering became the first Westerner to make contact with area Natives when he discovered the Diomede Islands off Alaska's west coast. Fifty years later, British explorer Capt. James Cook sailed along the coast, followed in the early 1800s by Russian explorers.

By the 1830s, the Russian American Co. had established trading posts at St. Michael and Russian Mission and, later in the century, whaling ships traveled through the area on their way north. The whaling crews, however, brought more than ropes and harpoons with them. They also brought disease and a substance that would forever change the lives of area Natives -- alcohol.

By the late 1800s, missionaries and gold prospectors had fanned out across the region, trying to convert souls and lay claim to the area's rich resources. Directed by Biblical passages, Moravian missionaries established Bethel in 1885. In 1892 educator Sheldon Jackson brought reindeer to the region, introducing what continues to be an important source of food and income for Natives throughout the Seward Peninsula.

Six years later, gold was discovered near Council and present-day Nome, and by 1900, some 20,000 people had descended on Nome, helping establish its lingering reputation as a rough-and-tumble gold mining town. Incorporated in 1901, Nome is Alaska's oldest first-class city.

The Yukon River town St. Michael also benefited from the gold rush -- in this case the rush to the Interior -- by serving as a major shipping center for those hauling supplies and equipment farther inland. Aniak, the largest community of the middle Yukon area, also has a gold-tinted history, having played a major role during the placer gold rush of 1900-1901.

In June 1942, Nome became the site of a massive military build up after military experts thought it likely...