Greetings everyone! I am assisting a friend, who lives in Nome, Alaska, in trying to get started with an historical impression of a very specific nature, and I would like to pick your brains and experiences for assistance. With advanced thanks for any reliable help! This is going to be JUST prior to WWI by date, but I figured that you WWI folks would be "in the know" on this, soooooo...(I also posted this on the board for the immediate previous period)...
The friend I am talking about wants to do a quality historical impression of a private from the U.S. Army's garrison at Fort Jefferson C. Davis, which was just south of Nome. It was built with the specific purpose of policing the Nome gold rush of 1898-1900, during the period in which Alaska was a military district of the United States. The soldiers mostly kept the peace between the miners, shyster lawyers, immigrants, Native Alaskans, homesteaders, and various other folks who flocked to Nome in 1900, and the garrison's presence was maintained until demobilization shortly after WWI I believe.
I have seen one historical reference, from two period photographs, mentioning
Company E, 30th U.S. Infantry Regiment (
http://vilda.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/cdmg11&CISOPTR=3626 and
http://vilda.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/cdmg11&CISOPTR=3627&CISOMODE=grid)...which might have been at least one of the garrisoning units (the history of the fort and its garrison are rather hard to come by...though photos of the fort, and some of its soldiers, from 1901 through 1918 or so do exist). There are a few other photos of soldiers in Nome from the time period:
http://vilda.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/cdmg2&CISOPTR=2667&CISOMODE=gridhttp://vilda.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/cdmg21&CISOPTR=6566http://vilda.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/cdmg21&CISOPTR=2169 (possibly deployment of troops for WWI...first contingent was sent to front, from Nome, in 1918)
If there is ANY help anyone can provide to pointing me in the right direction...sutlers, historical resources on the U.S. Army in this period, the Alaska Military Deparment during that era, I would greatly appreciate it! I want to do everything I can for this friend of mine!