Gold Rush Legacy

The Gold Rush Era is often considered the beginning of modern Alaska. Many of the principal towns of Alaska today were founded during the gold rush. Juneau began as a mining camp in 1880, and Douglas, across the channel, was founded a year later. In 1905, Congress moved the capital from Sitka to Juneau. Juneau had grown because of mining, while Sitka had become less important since the Russian era.

Hope on the Kenai Peninsula, Eagle, and Circle City on the middle Yukon River, Haines in the Southeast, and Council on the Seward Peninsula all started as mining camps. Other mining camps at Nome and Fairbanks survived to become important modern cities. Skagway and Valdez began as ports for stampeders traveling into the Interior.  All these towns are lasting legacies of the gold rush. However, many gold rush towns did not survive. Sunrise, Forty Mile, Iditarod, and Chisana are all examples of booming mining communities that became ghost towns.

The large increase in population and new towns led to investment in the state's transportation and communications systems. Trails were turned into roadways, and railway lines were laid to improve the efficiency of moving goods around the state. Prospecting continued mining for gold, but the economy expanded to other activities.

More people also meant a growing interest in better governance. For the first time in the American Era, Alaskan communities had real self-government, first on the local level, starting in 1900, and then on the state level, when, in 1912, Alaska received its first elected territorial legislature.