Jan 9

Written by:
1/9/2012 3:56 PM 

The Women of Nome’s Gold Rush: 1897-1906

By Priscilla Rhoades

At the height of the Klondike Gold Rush at the turn of the century, Nome was no place for a respectable woman. The congested Alaskan town was dirty, dangerous, and inhabited by hard-living men. Klondike “Klondy” Nelson saw Nome for the first time in 1902 as a curious five-year-old arriving with her mother, Alma. 
Alma Nelson had tired of waiting for her gold-fevered husband to come home to South Dakota and had determined that mother and daughter would join him in Nome. In her memoir, Daughter of the Gold Rush, Klondy described what they saw that October day after leaving their ship:
Nome in 1902 was a jumble of flimsy, false-fronted buildings, half of them saloons. There didn’t seem to be room on the boardwalk for another person. The men seemed to be of every nationality — Scandinavians, Russians, Greeks, Poles, Germans, French-Canadians, even Chinese.

Read more in the January/February Issue of Gold Prospectors Magazine.

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