Around Swedish America in 
Day 14 - St. Michael
There are several versions of how the second gold rush to Cape Nome on the tree-less Seward Peninsula in Alaska came about in 1898. One has it that it all started after the 22-year old Jafet Lindeberg weighed up a bag of gold dust worth a few hundred dollars at Tex Ritter’s Northern Saloon in St. Michael. “-I come from Nome,” the young man said “and there is more of this there.” By the next day everybody, including Ritter, had packed up and moved to Nome.
Jafet Lindeberg, who was half Sami, had come over to the U.S.A. the previous year, with five hundred reindeer and twenty “Laplander” families. The wild idea was that the tough reindeer would make good draught animals in the unforgiving northern climate. Moreover they could use the delicious meat, drink the milk and use the excellent skin in various ways (and we will tell you more when we arrive in Teller on day 16 of our trip). Soon after the Samis and the reindeer arrived at Golovin Bay, Jafet Lindeberg got a job at the Swedish mission that was doing work among the natives in the area. One of his co-workers was the 6-foot-6 giant, John Bryntesson from Värmland. One evening a half-starved tailor from San Francisco named Erik Lindblom appeared at the Mission ranting about gold. Everybody thought he was a bit crazy, but the religious Bryntesson, who thought well of everybody, believed him. Bryntesson knew that he could borrow the Mission barge for a prospecting expedition and that Jafet Lindeberg had kept provisions that could sustain the three of them. That was how their consortium was formed. Late in the night they worked out an agreement on how they would share their claims, quite unaware that they were to become the “Three Lucky Swedes”. (We will tell their story tomorrow on day 15).
St. Michael is located on the east coast of St. Michael Island in Norton Sound. A fortified trading post called "Redoubt St. Michael" was built by the Russian-American Company at this location in 1833; it was the northernmost Russian settlement in Alaska. The Native village of "Tachik" stood to the northeast. When the Russians left Alaska in 1867, several of the post's traders remained. A U.S. military post called Fort St. Michael was established here in 1897 when St. Michael became became a major gold rush gateway to the interior via the Yukon River. St. Michael was also a popular trading post for Eskimos to trade their goods for Western supplies. Centralization of many Yup'iks from the surrounding villages intensified after the measles epidemic of 1900 and the influenza epidemic of 1918. The village remained an important trans-shipment point for goods going into the interior of Alaska until the Alaska Railroad was built from Seward to Fairbanks. As many as 10,000 persons were said to live in St. Michael during the gold rush. Today there are only 368 inhabitants.