NOME, Alaska — With the price of gold increasing worldwide, hundreds are flocking to the shores of Nome for what's amounting to a second gold rush, more than 100 years after the original gold rush that gave birth to Nome, transforming it into a bustling town.
Ken Scott, a commercial diver from Thibodaux, Louisiana, is one of the Outsiders who found the possibility of instant riches in Nome too hard to resist.
“I’m up here to have some fun, and If I find some gold, that will make it more pleasurable,” said Scott.
Last week, as Scott prepared his dredger -- just delivered off the barge in Nome -- he lamented the dreary, cloudy summer weather overhead.
“Back in Louisiana, my wife said it was like 94 degrees,” Scott said. “This is like a Louisiana winter!”
Scott has been in Alaska for all of 10 days or so, and hundreds of other hopefuls have also recently made their way to Nome, some arriving just last week.
In the 1899, Nome found itself in an even bigger gold-driven boom, with thousands of miners arriving in just one summer, transforming the once-unknown village practically overnight.
Mitch Erickson of Nome Gold Alaska sees a lot of similarities between Nomes original gold rush and what’s happening today.
