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Updated: May 2, 2025
Dexter had settled at Chenik a number of years ago, and was making money by trading with the natives, when, in the autumn of 1898, the discovery of gold at Nome made him a very rich man. He was among the first to secure valuable claims.
We put up at a remarkably promising place, The Golden Gate Hotel; and, after a long unacquaintance with such a luxury, rested between sheets, and gave our things a chance to dry. We were lucky to have caught the Elmore, for otherwise it would have meant detention at Chenik for a week, awaiting an abatement of the storm.
But he was a nice old fellow, who wanted to get back to his home in southeastern Alaska, and envied me my departure. Arrived at Chenik, I put up at Dexter's Hotel, a pretentious and comfortable structure recently erected by that pioneer of northwestern Alaska.
It was fortunate to find at Chenik the North Star, a small stern-wheeler river boat, with whose captain a number of us quickly made satisfactory arrangements for immediate transportation to White Mountain, the half-way point to Council City. She soon, duck-like, flopped over to the side of the Elmore; our freight was rustled into her with all despatch; and, at eight o'clock in the evening, pretty well laden with passengers and their effects, this gem of the ocean, under the peculiar care of a crazy old Swede and his motley crew of three, was puffing and breathing hard and pushing her clumsy way across the bay toward the hidden delta of the Fish River. It was a matter of lying about the primitive machinery, by the boilers and wood fuel, to keep warm, and listening to a not too delightful crowd of alleged miners swapping lies about the country. Sleep, of course, was out of the question; a place to stretch out was not available except in the adjacent bunks of the crew, and on inspection of these I decided that I would rather not. It would not have seemed at all natural, or homelike, had we not proceeded, about midnight, to run into fog and upon the mud-flats. Only two and a half feet of water were requisite to allow the vessel to navigate, but in order to get that depth it was necessary to keep strictly in a zig-zag "channel," regarding whose location our navigator was not precisely expert. While we lingered upon the mucky bottom, a section of the crew, provided with a pole and a boat, under the orders of the captain (expressed forcibly and picturesquely, not to say profanely,
Leaving Nome in the evening, by the following noon we were off a small settlement comprising a few scattered sod houses, warehouses, and tents, called either by the Indian name "Chenik," or "Dexter's," after the pioneer who lived there with his Eskimo wife and children.
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