The Nome Nugget Archive 

The venerable Nome Nugget is the oldest newspaper continually running in Alaska to the present day. It has been characterized by several starts and stops in circulation, as well as frequent title changes over a nearly 40-year span.

Before his appointment to govern the territory of Alaska from 1913 to 1916, Major John Franklin Alexander (J.F.A.] Strong purchased the Nome Chronicle, changed its name to the Nome Nugget, and first published a New Year's Day edition in 1900, edited by T. F. Kane. Semi-weekly in frequency, the paper under Strong existed from 1901 until 1906. For a publisher who started the paper with a special issue, it is fitting that Strong's final issue was a special mining edition on June 6, 1906.

The paper ran as the Nome Semi-Weekly Nugget from 1904 to 1905 and the Nome Tri-Weekly Nugget from 1905 to 1907, before a change in the publication frequency necessitated a title change to the Nome Daily Nugget, as it was called from 1907 until 1918. Among the editors of the Nome Daily Nugget were Harry G. Steel, J. J. McGrath, F. W. Cobb, E. C. Divine, George S. Maynard, Richard Hatton, and Charles Sanford. (Strong edited only the June 11, 1906 issue.) The Daily Nugget published a mining edition starting in June 1908, as well as an annual mining and dredging edition from October 1910 through October 1916.

The Nome Tri-Weekly Nugget succeeded the Nome Daily Nugget and circulated from 1918 through 1919, before it again became the Nome Nugget, edited by Maynard and published weekly. On November 8, 1934, the paper changed its name back to the Nome Daily Nugget. This time, the Daily Nugget lasted from 1934 until 1937 before returning to the Nome Nugget for good on January 3, 1938. Editors included Maynard, W. A. Boucher, Jim Frye, Emily P. Boucher, Lester Bronson, Ed Jocius, Jean F. Sullivan, Al Phelps, Bob Richardson, Charles Ei, Albro Gregory, and Nancy McGuire.

The Alaska State Library has made an effort to digitally reshoot issues of the Nome Nugget based on the poor image quality of the microfilm. At the time of filming, many pages were overexposed and rendered unreadable. Fortunately, the library holds bound copies of the paper that provide better images, to ensure that the Nome Nugget can be read for generations to come.