There are many gripes about Millennial. We’re snowflakes, we can’t take criticism, with don’t work hard, we expect everything on a silver platter… I’ll refrain from the politics and economics of such statements, and I won’t reference the book “Ok, Boomer,” (a well thought out book solidly based on facts). No matter what others say, this Millennial is like a terrier on scent when it comes to research. There is nothing but dogged persistence.
I asked in one of my earliest posts about Nome, Alaska about water. I was writing a scene where Margaret is in the kitchen ladling water, when I realized, I had no idea where she was getting the water from. This has bugged me for going on six months now. Cistern? Was it delivered like in the early days, when miners would buy buckets of water hauled on wagons?
The answer: Moonlight Springs
In her diary, Elizabeth Robins mentioned seeing “…iron girders to clamp around the great water pipe made of wood that lies like a vast worm on the surface of the tundra. Under the enterprise of the Nome City Water Supply it will bring water from Moonlight Creek to town.” I was excited. What was the chances a person visiting Nome in 1900 would mention wooden pipes and girders? I said a heart-felt thank you to her detailed entries, and promised to pay it forward by writing about the mundane so someone three hundred years from now might benefit.
Moonlight Springs is located 2-3 miles north of Nome at the foot of Anvil Mountain. I know this from an evaluation that was done on the wells in 2006 by Nome city government. They include a topographical map, and a little history on the spring. Moonlight Springs and it’s marble aquifer has supplied Nome with water since the early 1900s. I am reasonably sure they used a gravity fed system, since I previously read FAR too much on how water was piped over the tundra for mining operations.
So, am I finished researching the Nome water system from 1920? No! I may know how fresh water traveled to town, but I don’t know how it got to homes. Central well? Pumped to homes? How many homes had running water? How did they keep it from freezing?
Persistence.
Northern Skies Publishing 