Bill and his dogs started from Nome in October, 1908, on a four years’ globe-trotting jaunt, and has been since trekking eastward, stopping now and then to rest himself and his animal friends and to have a little fun on the way.
Incidentally, Bill’s friends say he left Nome without a cent in his pocket, for one of the stipulations, if he is to win a purse of $10,000, said to have been offered by the Nome Sweepstakes Association, is that he must earn his own way around the world by Dec. 25, 1912.
New York Times, 23.05.1910
William F. Cooper, known as Caribou Bill, came to Saranac Lake about 1910 and set up a small studio complex on Edgewood Road. He had traveled here from Seattle, Washington, via Washington, DC, and New York City, purportedly by dog sled, having started out to circumnavigate the globe by dog sled in fulfillment of a ten thousand dollar challenge by the Nome Sweepstakes Association.
https://localwiki.org/hsl/William_F._Cooper