Fifteen years difference. They were looking for gold. The Alaska Gold Rush was really more of a Canadian Gold Rush, but a few doughty Swedish fellows stumbled upon a vein of gold out in the wilderness that is now Nome and made their claims. That was 1898. Two years later, as you see in the picture, they had plenty of company.

Living in a tent in Nome Alaska. Who would do that? Wyatt Earp would.

I guess Idaho wasn’t desolate enough to suit him. Nome was a rough and tumble place, as you can see, but he was no stranger to rough and tumble places, was he? He opened a saloon, made some money, and eventually sailed south to retire, and finally died in Los Angeles in 1929, after teaching John Wayne how to act like a cowboy.

But that jumble of tents couldn’t possibly disgorge anyone else famous, could it? Well, Jack London was said to be friends with Earp, but people tend to exaggerate such connections for the frisson of having celebrated people for acquaintances. But it’s possible.

Jack London is the third greatest American writer, after Twain and Hemingway. It’s telling that all three of those men wouldn’t be out of place in those pictures. It’s a wan bunch scribbling away in the newspapers now.

But drifting through a place isn’t the same as the place producing notable people, is it? Well, Jimmy Doolittle is likely in one of those tents. His father came up to Nome to prospect and little Jimmy lived there until 1908, when his mother thought it would be better if her children were educated in Los Angeles. Jimmy Doolittle never stood taller than 5’4″, but after learning to brawl in Nome, he was qualified to kick everyone’s ass in California. After making some dough as a professional boxer, and going to college to study mining, he joined the military. He eventually became an aviation pioneer, and was the first person ever to take off, fly and land a plane entirely by using instruments.

There has never been a man with a less apt name that Jimmy Doolittle. His raid on Japan in 1942 was the most audacious military action by an American since Washington went over the Delaware to kick some shivering Hessian ass.

The one signal characteristic of the modern intellectual, after ingratitude, is back-seat-driving 20/20 hindsight. The little intellectual community college hothouse flowers seem to have an opinion on everything that’s ever happened, and that’s not how they would have done it, I’m telling you — in the comments section of a third-rate blog at two AM. And it’s considered very trenchant just now to jape at anyone from Alaska, as we all know they’re all bumpkins up there.

They’re right, of course; it isn’t how they would have done it. None of it. They would have lain down on the ground, whimpered, and died before lifting a finger to help themselves, never mind helping anybody else. And I have grave doubts the pharmacy, just visible in the 1900 picture, has any Prozac; and although every manjack in town would have been prescribed Ritalin in kindergarten today, they wouldn’t have taken it. They would have moved to Nome instead.

Happy Independence Day, you bunch of bumpkins. No caveats. It’s all been as magnificent as human beings and nature would allow.