Alaska in 1910 - Fairbanks, Nome, Valdez

The Northern Navigation Company of San Francisco issued this promotional map of the Alaska gold regions around 1910, printed by the city's Hayden Press for distribution to prospectors and investors following the fortunes of the northern gold rushes. Unlike the standard commercial atlas maps of the period, this sheet was produced by a steamship operator whose vessels carried miners and freight along the Alaskan coast and up the Yukon system, and it doubles as both an advertisement for the company's routes and a genuine navigational reference. By 1910 the initial frenzy of the Klondike rush had cooled, but Fairbanks and its surrounding mining district were still drawing prospectors north on the strength of gold discovered there in 1902.

Named in red across the sheet, Fairbanks appears as the central supply hub for the interior, with Circle and Rampart marked as older placer-gold towns strung along the Yukon River, and Dome City and Cleary noted for the rich claims around nearby Pedro Dome. Valdez, on the southern coast, is shown as the starting point of the overland Winter Trail that carried prospectors north through the harsh interior months, while Nome and St. Michael, on the Bering Sea, and Unalaska, in the Aleutians, mark the maritime route favored by those traveling by water. Together these routes and camps trace the full logistical network, over both land and sea, that sustained Alaska's gold economy at the start of the twentieth century.

This map is a memorable gift for a family with Alaska mining roots, for a transplant now settled in Fairbanks, or for a collector of gold rush ephemera. It is available unframed in multiple sizes.