When gold fever struck Turnagain Arm a century ago, settlers poured into Girdwood, Seward and Hope. Railroad workers laid track through the Kenai Mountains, and miners toiled over sluices on dozens of streams. A network of trails traveled by foot and dog sled linked those places to Alaska's Interior and coastal boomtowns of Iditarod and Nome, hundreds of miles away.

On the Kenai Peninsula today, most of the old trails are overgrown or paved over. Many of the rough-hewn road houses and mining camps long ago rotted away.

But an aggressive project led by the U.S. Forest Service aims to reconstruct the first 120 miles of the Iditarod Trail between Seward and Girdwood for hikers, skiers, snowmachiners and dog mushers. In the process, planners hope to rekindle the area's sense of history. Remaining Gold Rush buildings and relics would be marked with signs and explained at kiosks. New trail spurs would lead to currently hidden historic landmarks.

If the proposed $15 million Iditarod National Historic Trail project is funded, the reinvigorated trail will become one of the nation's longest historical exhibits.

http://adn.com/front/story/2370624p-2424286c.html