he Iditarod, a tributary of the Innoko, some three years
later, opened up a new region of Alaska. It is characteristic of a gold
discovery in a new district that it sets men feverishly to work
prospecting all the adjacent country, and sends them as far afield from
it as the new base of supplies will allow them to stretch their tether.
A glance at the map will show that the Innoko and Iditarod country lies
between the two great rivers of Alaska, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim,
much lower down the Yukon than any of the earlier gold discoveries; that
is to say that while the Tanana gold fields lie off the Middle Yukon,
the Circle fields off the upper Yukon, the Iditarod camp belongs to the
lower river. The Innoko workings were not extensive nor very rich, but
they furnished a base for prospecting from which the Iditarod was
reached, and Flat Creek, in the latter district, promised to be
wonderfully rich. Immediately upon the news of this strike reaching the
other camps of the interior, preparations were made far and wide for
migrating thither upon the opening of Yukon navigation, and the early
summer of 1910 saw a wild stampede to the Iditarod. Saloon-keepers,
store-keepers, traders of all kinds, and the rag-tag and bobtail that
always flock to a new camp were on the move so soon as the ice went out.
From Dawson, from the Fortymile, from Circle, from Fairbanks, from the
Koyukuk, and as soon as Bering Sea permitted, from Nome, all sorts of
craft bore all sorts of people to the new Eldorado, while the first
through steamboats from the outside were crowded with people from the
Pacific coast eager to share in the opportunity of wealth. The
sensational magazines had been printing article after article about "The
incalculable riches of Alaska," and here were people hoping to pick some
of it up. Iditarod City sprang into life as the largest "city" of the
interior; the centre of gravity of the population of the interior of
Alaska was shifted a thousand miles in a month.

Iditarod City furnished a new and large base of supplies. Amidst the
heterogeneous mass of humanity that swarmed into the place, though by no
means the largest element in it, were experienced prospectors from every
other district in Alaska. Under the iniquitous law that then prevailed
and has only recently been modified, by which there was no limit at all
to the number of claims in a district which one man could stake for
himself and others, every creek adjacent to Fl