Innoko

A glance at the map will show that the Innoko and Iditarod country lies between the two great rivers of Alaska, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, much lower down the Yukon than any of the earlier gold discoveries; that is to say that while the Tanana gold fields lie off the Middle Yukon, the Circle fields off the upper Yukon, the Iditarod camp belongs to the lower river.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

From Dishkaket, after crossing the Innoko, we took the most northerly of the three trails to the Yukon, the Lewis Cut-Off, a trail of a hundred miles that strikes straight across country and reaches the Yukon eighty miles farther up that stream than the Nulato trail and a hundred and twenty miles farther up than the Kaltag trail.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

The first fifty miles of the country between the Innoko and the Yukon is much the same, and we were climbing and descending ridges for a couple of days.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

THE discovery of gold on the Innoko in the winter of 1906-7, and the

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

Lewis Cut-Off one hundred miles to Dishkaket on the Innoko, and thence across country another hundred miles to Iditarod City.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

The Innoko workings were not extensive nor very rich, but they furnished a base for prospecting from which the Iditarod was reached, and Flat Creek, in the latter district, promised to be wonderfully rich.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

Koyukuk before the first white man's cabin is reached, and as many miles up the Innoko and the Iditarod and find no white men save wood-choppers.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

Dishkaket was merely a native village on the Innoko River two or three years before; but since three new trails from the Yukon come together here -- from Kaltag Nulato, and Lewis's Landing -- and in the other directions two trails branch off here, to the Innoko diggings at Ophir and to the Iditarod, a store or two and a couple of road-houses had sprung up.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

Although the Russians had establishments on the lower Kuskokwim seventy-five years ago, and the river is the second largest in Alaska and easy of navigation, yet the white man had penetrated very little into this country until the Innoko and Iditarod "strikes" of 1908 and 1909 respectively.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891

Then we crossed a high ridge and dropped out of Innoko waters into the valley of the Yukatna, a tributary of the Yukon, and passed down this valley for thirty or forty miles, and then across some more broken country to the Yukon.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891