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Back to Iditarod National Historic Trail
Iditarod (I-DIT-a-rod) Lat 62.38 Long 155.05 -- This ghost town, once a bustling community of over 10,000, was the heart of the Iditarod mining district , from whence the trail got it's name. Nome -- (OME) Lat 64.27 Long 164.49 -- Population 3,500 -- The end of the Iditarod trail. Prospectors established this Seward Peninsula city as Anvil City after adjacent Anvil Creek in 1898. A year later gold was discovered in beach sand, and it became a boom town, home of 30,000 gold seekers. This city was renamed Nome 1899 after a nearby point on Noton Sound, which got it's name in 1853 when a British Navy cartographer misinterpeted a chart notation of "?Name" and recorded Nome.