The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-04-18
GOLD RUSH MYTHS EXPLODED AZ VET
 OF '9S RUSH TALKS

When Henry Roden. Territorial Treasurer. tells about the Gold Rush of '98, the glamor goes out of 1t, and the people become hard-work- ing ordinary men instead of gum toting. wild-eyed supermen.
 He takes the glamor out of the Gold Rush story when he tells it, because he divides fiction from fact and makes one feel akin to the old : time prospectors. He did this Mon day night at the meeting of the Parent-Teachers Association when he spoke on Early Days in Alaska.
 Roden came from Switzerland to take part in the rush to the Klon- dike after reading about the gold discovery while in Paris in 1897
 Glowing Reports
 "They were glowing reports of the Yukon Territory" he said. Re membering them makes me think of the reports put out these days by the Alaska Steamship Company, the Alaska Development Board, and chambers of commerce"
 He landed in Skagway in Janu- ary, 1898. He and his partner-a Californian he had met on the ship coming north-put up tent, only to have it burn the first night.
 (At this point in his talk Rodeil began scrubbing off glanor)
 Soapy Smith was quite a gentle man if you met him in his saloon and his thugs wouldn't hold you ur if you didn't have lot of money.
 You didn't have to play the shell game with him if you didn't want to, but I thought I'd get rich quick and lost $5O," he recalled. No Trail Hardships
 Gold-seeker Roden didn't see any hardships on the Klondike trail.
 It was just plain hard work. he said, and with proper equipment you had no trouble. Every sort oi domestic animal = including the goat-was used for pulling the slec loads of gear, but most people just lowed their equipment themselves They were required by Canadian law to have a years supply of fooc along, and that made quite bur- den. They would pull load ol about 15O pounds for ten miles, re. turn for another load, and so forth
 It wasn't hardship; it was work. Builds Boat After crossing White Pass, he ano his partner built a boat at Lake Bennett.
 It wasn't over gold that mos trouble between partners developed he said. It was during the whip. saving of lumber.
 "The man on top would complain that the man below the scaffoIt wasn't doing his share of saving The man below would say he was in spite of the sawdust in his eyes The only trouble I ever had witt my partner was while we were whip saving"
 They paid boatmen $50 to steer them through Miles Canyon ane $100 to steer them through White Horse Rapids.
 He exploded another myth: No many men were killed in the "a. pids."
 He said that if the records O. the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were opened, he didn't think they would show records of more thar ten men being killed in the rapid during the rush. There were To of Mounties along the rapids to helI in case of emergencies.
 Gold Camp Dawson
 He and his partner reached Daw son in June of 1898. It was a roar ing, gold rush town.
 But the saloons weren't an. worse, or maybe not as bad, as vol see in Juneau or Anchorage today.
 The actual gold-seeking? We'll, i was hard work, too. Mighty har' work. You'd build fire and thav the ground six inches; scoop ou the thawed ground and build an other fire; and on until you reached bedrock. Then you most likel, wouldn't get rich.
 Roden went from prospecting ant mining to become a member 0 Alaska's first Legislature. Terri