Dig Into Alaska’s Gold History & Culture

The town of Hope may be a quiet little community today, but during the Turnagain Arm Goldrush in the late 1800s, Hope was home to miners, gamblers, and thieves.

Learn all about this core piece of Alaska history, explore the shops, cafes, wonderful hiking trails, and discover the Alaskan way of life in the quaint town of Hope tucked away in the forest of a beautiful seaside valley!

Try your hand at gold prospecting at our exclusive historic mining claim location and keep anything you find!

Sunrise was established in 1895 and incorporated in 1896, and grew rapidly as a supply center for miners participating in the gold rush along Turnagain Arm in the late 1890s. It was briefly the largest city in the Alaska Territory. At its height in 1898, the community had a summertime population of 800, with several general stores, saloons, and a restaurant and hotel. The city declined after 1900, with miners drawn to richer gold fields elsewhere in Alaska. Many of its buildings burned in the following years, and the last store closed in 1939. Remnants of the town on either side of Sixmile Creek have been designated an archaeological historic district, and were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. – Wikipedia

The Hope-Sunrise Historical and Mining Museum exhibits photographs and artifacts of the Turnagain Arm Gold Rush of 1896 and the years since. Displays include a road grader, dog sled, rock crusher, blacksmith bellows and postal boxes. In addition to the log museum building there is a mine bunkhouse and a blacksmith shop. – www.alaska.org