Media Advisory

TO                         Features Editors and News Directors

FROM                     UAF's Bibliography of Alaska and Polar Regions Department

SUBJECT                Nome Gold Rush Photo Exhibit

LOCATION              Main floor of the Rasmuson Library, UAF Campus

DATE & TIME          Dec. 15, 1999 to Jan. 31, 2000

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Nome Gold Rush, which lured prospectors and proprietors, bankers and bandits to the northwestern shores of the Last Frontier with whispered promises of a yellow rock everyone was itching to get their hands on. In 1899, William and Walter Butler, two brothers from Minnesota, were among the thousands that flocked to the Far North in search of riches. They brought with them mining tools and the business acumen earned from a successful family construction company, but they also brought something a bit unusual for the trip- a camera.

The pictures they took of the tumultuous town at the turn of the century are the subject of a traveling photo exhibit featured Dec. 15-Jan. 13 on the main floor of the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The exhibit photos from the Butler album feature Nome at the height of the Gold Rush along with seascapes and marine mammals from the Seward Peninsula. The album was given to the UAF in 1964 by George Wilkinson, who received it as a gift from William Butler in 1936.

The aging photos were preserved by the UAF Alaska and Polar Regions Department through a grant from the Alaska Gold Rush Centennial Task Force, using funds provided by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A virtual exhibit will also be available through the UAF's Bibliography of Alaska and Polar Regions department website at http:www.uaf.edu/library/collections.apr/index.html

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CONTACT: Editor Ronald Inouye, Bibliography of Alaska and Polar Regions Department, at (907) 474-5354.

JCS/12-10-99/00-032