The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-07-28
Reads Like a Tale From tn
Arabian Nights.
STRUGGLE FOR GOLD.
Is Now Worth 100000 Picked
Up at Cape Nome.
Brakeman on the Santa Fe and
Harvey House Porter.
Some of the Difficulties He Had
to Contend With.

Peabody, July ga great many peo-
pie at Marion. Florence and Hillsboro
will remember George Dean, who came
to the city of Marion in 1888. and worked
for years as a laborer in that town, at
Hillsboro at Florence and on farms in
various parts of the county.
Among all the narratives of long bat
ties with adversely and grapplings with
the wolf of want which have finally been
rewarded with wealth that one hears in
the gold fields. none surpasses the story
of George Dean. He owns claims No z.
II and Is on Snow creek at Nome, and is
the inventor of the Dean gold and sand
separator, which has been the best ma
chine at Cape Nome for extracting gold
from the beach sands.
Three years ago George Dean was
brakeman on the Santa Fe railroad be-
tween Needles, Cal, and Winslow, Ariz.
-Four years ago he was porter at the
Fred Harvey eating house and hotel at
Florence, Kan, and for ten years pre-
vious to that he had lived in poverty,
doing anything that would honestly
bring him food and raiment, at Marion
and HillsborO, Kan. Today he has in
vestments of $4,000 in Yukon River
Steam Transportation company stocks
He has $4,000 in an old established sal
mon packing concern at Victoria, Brit.
ish Columbia, and he has mortgages on
Yukon river craft to the value of $50 900
or $55, 600 Besides he owns three placer
gold mines, for each of which he has at
different times declined $4,000, and he
owns lots at Nome City, which have ad-
vanced fabulousIy in value since he
bought them for few dollars last year.
Mayor Kilmer said to the writer last
fall:
George Dean is one of the five richest
men in the Cape Nome gold field. He
has literally jumped from the life of
plodding, man with the hoe destiny be-
fore him, into riches beyond his dreams
l believe Dean is worth now about $780,
0OO II his mines pan out well several
years longer, and Nome City booms and
grows like Dawson is 1885, he will be
worth $1,000,0 in a few years more
that is, If he keeps his senses and doesn't
get foolish, as 1 have known a lot of
miners to do after they have struck it
very rich.''
George Dean came down the coast
from Cape Nome on the very last steam
er of the season last October. He spent
three months in Seattle and San Fran
CISCO where he perfected his patent
washer for separating gold from the
forty miles on the beach north and south
from Nome City. He sailed back for
Nome a few weeks ago.
one day in Seattle he went down to
see the halr-breed fisherman with whom
he slept when he was broke in that city
in 1898, and he astonished his old chum
by leaving deposit of $500 for him at a
Seattle bank.
life" said George Dean one day on the
steamer from Skaguay, Alaska, to Sc
attic. I think mine has been a very
uncommon career, and it's telling may
cheer many poor, hard-up, discouraged
fellow. I've been there myself
one day in February, when I was in
Frisco seeing thousands getting ready
for sailing to Alaska, 1 heard that 1
could get a job the Alaskan steamer
Bertha, which would soon sail north
ward from Seattle. I rode in empty
freight cars and by good luck reached
Seattle in four days. BY opportunities
| got job as fireman on the Bertha to
st. Michael. I knew it was terrible
work and that I would pay dearly in
sweat and the hardest sort of labor for
my journey to the north, but 1 was
bound to go. Until the steamer sailed
| lived in Siwash Indian hsherman's
hut, so hard up was l.
THE Bertha reached ST Michael
near the mouth of the Yukon river in
Alaska, in June. The 1876 passengers at
once took passage on the Yukon river
craft, and went steaming LOO miles UP
the stream to Dawson City. I had but
$3.50 as my total capital, and the fare
from St Michael to Dawson was $50 SO
l stayed at St. Michael I worked at
painting a Yukon river boat, and got a
job in salmon cannery there. But the
pay was only enough to keep me from
hunger and furnish me a place to live
in when fall came on and the ice
cut the west coast of Alaska off from
the rest of the world,I got watchman's
job on the Yukon river boat, Weare,
and was promised a free passage to
Dawson when navigation reopened.
Along in October, 1898. it was ru-
mored about the Eskimo fishing and
whaling seaport of ST. Michael, that the
Rev. Matthew Anderson, a Lutheran
missionary on the Boring sea coast of
Alaska and several more Scandinavians
up there, had found on Cape Nome,
further up the coast and 100 miles
across Nortons bay, the richest gold
diggings ever known For a week no
one seriously believed the story. Then
an Eskimo came down from Nome
across a vast area of snow and ice-to
st. Michael. He brought letters from the
pioneers at Nome to their friends in st.
Michael The news of the new gold
fields were all substantiated. st. Mich
ael went crazy, and with 1T. meant
to go to Nome forthwith, no matter at
what hazard. October Is, 1898, seven
of us started with a dog team and half
a ton of grub and furs and robes on a
sledge, to tramp to Cape Nome.
We'll, we reached Nome There were
twenty-five men there before us. We
pitched our tent. and became Nomers
when the night was inky black, when