#30DayMapChallenge Day 26, Transportation. Nome, Alaska is the emerging Arctic Gibraltar of Arctic Shipping Routes. But its past as the end of the Iditarod dog sledding trails, saved from diptheria by Balto and the other mushers shapes its identity forever. Why? Zelensky's Theorem of First Effective Settlement states that "Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been." The descendants of that community have been shaped by the retelling of that story over and over and over again. Showing Nome's past and near present-future reminds us how important modes of transportation are in shaping the development of a region.