Geo answer

The trail to today’s Geo Quiz is paved with gold.

We’re looking for the name of an overland trail that links the Gulf of Alaska with the Pacific Ocean. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on this trail a hundred years ago. Then, a couple of prospectors struck gold in an Alaskan riverbed.

” Two prospectors weathered over freeze-up and were prospecting during the winter months, they discovered gold on Christmas Day of 1908. Word didn’t get out to the larger world until Fall 1909 because they were so remote and the first shipments of gold started to be carried 500 miles to Tidewater where they could be shipped to what we call up here the “outside”.

Historian and trail administrator Kevin Keeler says it was America’s last great gold rush. People came from all over the world to get in on the action.

So name this trail that became a gold superhighway.

We were prospecting for gold in today’s Geo Quiz….and looking for the name of historic trail that early miners travelled as they went to and from Alaska’s frozen landscape.

Kevin Keeler is the Trail Administrator for the Iditarod National Historic Trail (the answer to our quiz).

The Iditarod Trail crosses Alaska from Seward to Nome…it was the “superhighway” of the America’s last great gold rush. It attracted fortune seekers from around the world. By the way, the original mail route from Seward to Nome was 938 miles. The total mileage for the historic trail system (including side and connecting trails) is approximately 2,300 miles.

Listen to our interview with Kevin Keeler.

Picture above: November 1910 – An ex-stagecoach driver from the Black Hills gold rush in South Dakota, Bob Griffis, is hired by the Miners and Merchants Bank in Iditarod to carry 700 pounds of gold (worth $10 million dollars at today?s rates) from Iditarod to Seward for shipment to the Lower 48. Griffis successfully makes this trip and dozens others up to World War I without ever being held up. In 1916, he moves the largest recorded load by dogsled?3,400 pounds, with a team of 46 dogs . (photo courtesy Iditarod National Historic Trail)

America’s Last Great Gold Rush

Legendary musher Jujiiro Wada

Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin’s proclamation for Iditarod Gold Discovery Day