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Arthur H. Moore
A. H. MOORE has been a resident of Nome since the spring of 1900, and has
been conspicuously identified with the freighting, transfer and contracting business
of Seward Peninsula. He was the owner of the Gold Beach Transfer Company, doing a general freighting and transfer business, and conducting a line of stages
between Nome and Council City in the winter seasons. He has also built a number
of ditches in this country, among them the Cripple River Hydraulic Mining Company's
Ditch, the Corson Ditch, and the Golden Dawn Ditch. During the past winter he
organized the Gold Beach Development Company, of which S. G. Anderson is president;
Robert Hall, vice-president; Frank Omeara, treasurer; W. L. Barclay, secretary, and A.
H. Moore superintendent. This is a St. Paul, Minn., corporation, having for its object
ihe business of freighting, contracting and mining. The company owns 830 acres
of mineral land on Iron Creek, and has planned to construct a ten-mile ditch this season
to convey water for mining this property.
A. H. Moore is a native of Brooklyn, Me. He was born September 20, 1867,
and was educated in the public schools of his native state. He belongs to a family
of sailors, his father having been master of vessels. One of his brothers was captain,
during several seasons, of one of the steamers of the Nome fleet. When twenty years
of age the subject of this sketch shipped as a sailor before the mast. In 1888 he left
home and traveled by way of Cape Horn to the Western Coast of America. He located
in Port Townsend, and established a country store in the Olympic Mountains. He
bought a pack train and engaged in this form of transportation business between Port
Townsend and his store and the country thereabouts.
In 1897 he went up the Yukon and was employed as a mate on one of the river
steamers. In those days the river boats burned wood which was obtained from wood
choppers along the banks of the stream. A myriad of mosquitoes infested this country,
making the work of loading fuel into the vessel both burdensome and unpleasant, and
how the wood choppers managed to cut this wood, beset as they were by these pestiferous
insects, is something that can be more pleasantly imagined than experienced. Mr. Moore
spent a winter on Dall River, a tributary of the Yukon, and during the winter of '98-'99
he ascended the Koyukuk to the head-waters. He came down the river in the spring of
'99. This was a 1 ,600-mile trip.
February 2, 1893, A. H. Moore married Erne D. Hunter, of Port Townsend.
They have three children, Willie, aged ten; Marion, eight; and Lucy, an infant. Mr.
Moore is an energetic man and a tireless worker. He possesses more than a modicum of
Yankee wit, and has the faculty of aptly illustrating a point in his conversation with a
droll story. Mr. Moore is noted for his courtesy and disposition to accommodate people.
He has made many friends in Seward Peninsula. This fact was best attested in the
spring of 1904 when he was selected as a candidate for school trustee of Nome. He did
not favor the idea of being mixed up in politics, but the nomination coming to him
unsought he felt that it was his duty to permit his name to go before the people, and without
effort upon his part he was elected by the largest majority of any of the candidates for this
office. A citizen of Council City, who visited Nome a few days before the municipal
lection, made this remark: "'If Mr. Moore's election was dependent entirely upon the
rote of Council City, he would be elected unanimously." The many acts of kindness
which he had shown the residents of Council City while conducting the stage line from
Nome to Council had inspired the sentiment just expressed.
Source: Nome and Seward Peninsula by R. S.
Harrison. Seattle: The Metropolitan Press, 1905.
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