on the ocean shores of Nome, prompting the Nome Gold Rush. Within a year, the area became popular among miners of European descent, who built and incorporated the city. Nome quickly reached a population of more than 10,000. Gold mining supported this population into the early 1900s, but the city's population had fallen considerably by 1910.

A series of fires and violent storms destroyed most of Nome's Gold Rush era buildings between 1905 and 1974. In the winter of 1925, a diphtheria