What’s in an Alaska name?

Ionce asked a snowmachiner heading out on a trail from Nome where he was going.

“Boston,” he said before speeding off.

Not knowing of any Boston within 3,600 miles, I thought I had misheard him.

But later that day I looked at a map of the route of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes dog race that started the next day (the last race was held in 2008). In the middle of the course was a checkpoint: Boston, Alaska.

A day later, I walked into the Nome library to see if it had U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 567, also known as Donald Orth’s Dictionary of Alaska Place Names.

The 6.5-pound blue book (not recommended for backpacking) listed Boston as a stopping point on the old Nome-to-Candle Trail. A prospector named it sometime before 1902, for the nearby Boston Creek. Like so many othe