Alaska Koyukuk gold rush history begins in 1898, when about seventy small steamers carried prospectors up the Koyukuk River through practically unknown country. Most of the boomtowns that sprang up in 1898 and 1899 have since disappeared, leaving Wiseman, Coldfoot and the ghost town of Old Bettles as the survivors. The gold itself was real, placer mining, which recovers gold from loose gravel, produced more than $4 million by 1918. Few individual miners cleared more than $50,000, yet a larger share of them made between $5,000 and $50,000 than in any other Alaskan district. Most streams there yielded coarse gold.
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