The city of thirty-seven hundred residents is almost as far west as you can go in North America. Front Street parallels the sea, whose storms and giant blocks of ice have sometimes beaten the business district flat. Gold’s current valuation is just one of many international factors to keep in mind here. The Russia-U.S. border, which follows the International Date Line, is less than a hundred and fifty miles away. Provideniya, a Russian town with a formerly large military base, is two hundred and thirty miles from Nome. Cruise ships from Europe that have travelled the Northeast Passage route over the top of the planet stop in Nome, as do ships that have followed the Northwest Passage across northernmost North America.