"Iditarod and its associated events is pretty much the show in March," said Randy Romenesko, Nome city manager. Romenesko was preparing March 8 to test sirens announcing the arrival of each musher.

City revenues are about even for February and April each year, but in March revenues exceed that average by about $50,000, Romenesko said.

Bed taxes bring in an additional $109,000 in March, said Cussy Kauer of the city's finance department, who has seen the finish of every single Iditarod race. "The tills are smoking up here," said Kauer, the great granddaughter of a 1890s gold rush adventurer.

That financial boost is especially important this March, after what local merchants say has been a long, lean winter in this Northwest Alaska transportation and commerce hub of 3,505 people.

"It's a tremendous spike, our own little Mardi Gras," said Mitch Erickson, executive director of the Nome Chamber of Commerce. "And after a very slow winter, this is a big shot in the arm.

"This will be a good one, because there are so many mushers involved, and everyone has their favorite," Erickson said. "This is a very, very welcome event, and we are very lucky to have it. We try to put out our best."

While Nome attracts more than 20,000 visitors annually, it is the Iditarod that brings the most people to Nome in such a short time, said Josie Stiles, executive director of the Nome Convention and Visitors Center. "It's our biggest event of the year," she said.

With all of the city's 185 hotel rooms booked, the visitor center is placing the overflow crowd in private homes, vacant apartments and any other places not currently rented, Stiles said. "We encourage anybody to come to Nome," she said. "We have never gotten to a point where we have run out of housing.

"Everyone should experience this event. There is nothing like being at the finish line. This will be my 25th Iditarod," Stiles said.

Former Nome Mayor Leo Rasmussen said that as far back as the 1990s, events surrounding the Iditarod were worth about $23 million to the state of Alaska. But Rasmussen said the Iditarod has had another benefit that can't be measured in dollars.

When mining companies shut down here in 1962, the drive in the community was gone for villagers who came to work in Nome, he said.

"It became rather desperate, because there was nothing in springtime to pick up the spirit," he said. "There was an attempted suicide every four days on average and a committed suicide every 11 days. That was the way things used to be.

"Iditarod came along, and within two Iditarods that kind of personal abuse disappeared overnight," Rasmussen said.

Nome-area residents were hard hit this past fall and winter by soaring prices on fuel for their vehicles and homes. Vehicle fuel was running at $2.95 a gallon. "People's incomes don't jump to adjust to fuel prices, so money otherwise spent elsewhere went to pay fuel bills," he said.

Local community organizations hope to make up some of that loss with small fund-raisers, including reindeer stew feeds and a chili cook-off, Erickson said.

"We've had one of the worst winters in years and years," said Bob Madden, who owns Fat Freddie's restaurant on Front Street with his wife, Connie. "If you work yourself right, you make the equivalent of a month and a half's business in 10 days of Iditarod. It keeps you from going bankrupt."

Madden said last year's Iditarod was their best yet for business.

"Some years it is a hamburger crowd and some years it's a steak crowd," he said. "Last year it was a steak crowd. The year before that it was a hamburger crowd. Without exception, everybody looks forward to it, especially when we've had a bad year like we've had this year."

Nome's visitor industry hopes that the race finish and other Iditarod week activities, from the mushers banquet to the Bering Sea Ice Golf Classic, will lure travelers back to Nome again.

Restaurants are stocked for the onslaught of customers and managers of the Nugget Inn, which had closed for the winter, reopened for the Iditarod, Stiles said.

Rasmussen, who owns a bed and breakfast, said he had 30 to 40 phone calls from Iditarod fans looking for a room for the finish of the race.

"We have three bedrooms and two sofas, and they are full," Rasmussen said. This year's guests include an Israeli woman, a woman from Norway, two couples from the continental United States and Dody Nesbit of Tulsa, Okla. Nesbit, a perennial Iditarod volunteer, leaves a check for the next Iditarod when she departs every year, Rasmussen said.

The Iditarod awards banquet, an effort of the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage and about 100 Nome volunteers, attracts 650 to 800 diners to Nome's recreation center. There is also a Red Lantern banquet, honoring the last musher to complete the race.

Iditarod week events also include the Nome-Golovin snowmachine race, with a $35,000 purse this year; the Lonnie O'Connor Memorial Basketball Tournament, with 41 participating basketball teams; the miners and mushers ball; readings of Robert Service poetry; and a celebration of the 80th anniversary of the 1925 diphtheria serum run to Nome.

"So many events are going on, it makes you wonder how they can get enough volunteers, let along enough people to attend them," Erickson said. "Everybody is involved in something."

Web resources: City of Nome - www.nomealaska.org

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska