page_title: North-West Mounted Police
section_title: Klondike gold rush
hierarchical_section_title: North-West Mounted Police / History / Later years (1895–1914) / Klondike gold rush
caption_attribution_description: English: NWMP in Yukon in tent; copyright expired, see http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&amp;rec_nbr=3407658&amp;lang=eng
context_page_description: The North-West Mounted Police was a Canadian police force, established in 1873 by the Prime Minister, Sir John Macdonald, to maintain order in the North-West Territories. The mounted police combined military, police and judicial functions along similar lines to the Royal Irish Constabulary, and deployed the following year to the Alberta border in response to the Cypress Hills Massacre and subsequent fears of a United States military intervention. Their ill-planned and arduous journey of nearly 900 miles became known as the March West and was portrayed by the force as an epic journey of endurance. Over the next few years, the police extended Canadian law across the region, establishing good working relationships with the First Nations. The force formed part of the military response to the North-West Rebellion in 1885, but faced criticism for their performance during the conflict.
  The mounted police assisted in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, including relocating indigenous communities living along the route.
context_section_description: Up until the 1890s, the government had no presence in the far north-west of Canada. In 1894, the rise of gold mining and a growing population led to calls for Ottawa to intervene, both to control whiskey trading and to protect the local First Nations. In response, the mounted police carried out a survey along the Yukon River and gathered customs duties. Fears grew that the United States might try to seize the mineral-rich region, and a twenty-man police team was established at Forty Mile in 1895. Although there was very little actual crime, frictions soon rose between the police and the Miners' Committees, which had been created to provide informal justice during the previous few years. The police brought the issue to a head in June 1896, sending a team into one of the mining camps to overturn the decisions of the local committee.
  In 1896, huge amounts of gold were discovered in the Klondike valley. Once news of this circulated the following year, around 100,000 people rushed to the Klondike in search of wealth, most with no experience in the mining industry. To reach the area, many prospectors travelled by foot over arduous mountain routes and along rivers using primitive boats, although no more than 40,000 of them successfully reached the goldfields. A substantial and expensive mounted police detachment was established in the Klondike, amounting to 288 men by 1898, representing around a third of the entire force and including many of its most experienced personnel.
  The borders in the region had been disputed since the American purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and most of the influx of prospectors were American. Amid fresh concerns that the United States might annex the gold fields, the mounted police were tasked to assert Canadian control along the border line. The force set up control posts at the borders of the Yukon and at easily controlled mountain passes, equipping the posts with Maxim guns. The police checked for illegal weapons and prevented the entry of criminals and collected customs duties, while helping protect and guide the flow of migrants, mediating in their disputes and providing practical advice.
  The mounted police established their headquarters in the boomtown of Dawson City and patrolled out across the Yukon Territory, creating a network of thirty-three posts. Detectives were deployed to infiltrate American organizations to seek out potential conspiracies. The police's role also encompassed fire safety, the management of local game hunting, operating the postal and telegraph system, acting as coroners and running the mining registration system. The historian Morris Zaslow describes the Yukon as forming a "police state" during this period, and William Morrison has highlighted the force's paternalistic willingness to invent and enforce non-existent laws whenever they considered it necessary. The police acted efficiently and with probity during the period, largely curbing criminality in the region, although their task was helped by the geography of the Klondike, which made it relatively easy to bar entry to undesirables.
caption: Mounted police deployed to the Yukon, 1898
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