Alaska’s Koyukuk gold rush drew 70 steamers in 1898; boomtowns vanished by 1921

Horses towing freight scow between Bettles and Nolan, 1913 (Image: USGS Photographic Library) Alaska Koyukuk gold rush history begins in 1898, when about seventy small steamers carried prospectors up the Koyukuk River through practically unknown country. Most of the boomtowns that sprang up in 1898 and 1899 have since disappeared, leaving Wiseman, Coldfoot and the ghost town of Old Bettles as the survivors. The gold itself was real, placer mining, which recovers gold from loose gravel, produced more than $4 million by 1918. Few individual miners cleared more than $50,000, yet a larger share of them made between $5,000 and $50,000 than in any other Alaskan district. Most streams there yielded coarse gold.How a fleet of about seventy small steamers pushed 600 miles up the Koyukuk River in 1898A 1921 article in The Pathfinder magazine, republished by the National Park Service, describes the fleet as loaded with prospectors, most of whom owned their boats. The majority came from the eastern United States, with a scattering of experienced old-timers among them. The account credits those old-timers with getting the fleet 600 miles or more up the river, as far as the sites of today’s town...