Short on Fuel, Alaskans Now Burning Their Stuff

[james&olya 1,121]

I give. I know McKenzie County, North Dakota was named after a corrupt Senator McKenzie that helped to found Nome, but I don' know the tie in with the McKenzie River in BC and igloos.

You mentioned that the only wood to be found around Nome was driftwood along the shore. The same thing occurs in the arctic ocean along the entire Alaskan coast in spite of the absence of any trees north of the Brooks range. They come from the Mackenzie River that opens into the Arctic a few miles East of the Alaska-Canada border. With Arctic currents going east to west, the driftwood from trees falling into the Mackenzie from farther south in Canada where trees grow get deposited along the Alaskan Arctic coast. As a result the Eskimos there use the driftwood along with animal skins to construct their temporary fishing camp shelters in a way resembling Indian teepees! They still call them 'igloos' I have been told. It is only in Canada East of the Mackenzie where there is no shoreline driftwood to be found where the Eskimos are forced to build the more difficult shelters from blocks of ice/snow that are what most people think of as 'igloos'!