Iditarod, Alaska
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Iditarod is an unincorporated area located in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska.
Geography
It is on the east bank of Iditarod River, 11 km (7 miles) northwest of Flat.
History
The town of Iditarod was named after the Iditarod River. Iditarod comes from the Athabascan word Haiditarod. Iditarod was the site of an Athabascan village or part-time camp before 1900.
On Christmas Day 1908, prospectors John Beaton and Henry Dyckman (or Dikeman) found gold in the country along the upper Iditarod River, a tributary of the Innoko River. The next summer, on their way to Takotna to record their claims, they told a steamboat crew about their find.
Within a year a gold rush began in the Iditarod mining district, which was in the middle of an extremely remote area of Alaska. Within a year the town of Iditarod, at the end of the part of the Iditarod River accesible by steamboat, briefly became the biggest city in Alaska, with 4,000 people in it. It had hotels, newspapers, electricity, telephones, and automobiles, all brought by steamboats that came from Bering Sea up the Yukon, Innuko and Iditarod Rivers. Other towns were built at Flat Discovery, Otter, Willow Creek and Dikeman.
By 1910 the gold was gone and most of the miners left. Iditarod is now a ghost town.
The Iditarod Trail supply route and the Iditarod dogsled race were named after the Iditarod mining district.