Unlike most Bush towns, Nome didn’t start as a Native settlement. Born abruptly after the discovery of gold in 1898, it was initially named Anvil City, after the gold strike in Anvil Creek. Though gold mining remains big business around Nome, the rush is long past and the population now stands at about 3,500.

Steps from the visitor centre, in the basement of the library building, is the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum, which focuses on early Bering Strait-area Eskimo life, the gold rush, and the 1925 diphtheria epidemic.

Nome is an excellent place to buy Native art and crafts, notably carved ivory, a specialty of north-western villages. The Chukotka-Alaska Store carries not only Alaska Yupik products but also Siberian Yupik works and other Russian wares.