In 1987 two events occurred that focused the efforts of the Kobuk District of the Bureau of Land Management on several historic water works in the Nome area. First, the district regular program of baseline cultural resource inventory occurred in the kigluaik Mountains north of Nome that year. As a result of this field work, we began to research the history of the Wild Goose Pipeline, a unique wood-stave pipeline constructed in the first decade of the twentieth century to bring water to mining operations near Nome.