Klondike Gold Rush Yukon Territory 1897 Yukon Territory 1897 (Gordon Stables (1840-1910) The Klondike gold rush began in July of 1897 when two ships docked in San Francisco and Seattle carrying miners returning from the Yukon with bags of gold. The press was alerted and papers carried the story to the masses. Soon, miners of all shapes and sizes, called "stampeders", were on their way to the gold fields. Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers set off for the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the trip. Most stampeders knew little or nothing about where they were going, so pamphlets were available to help them on their way. Many of the pamphlets contained little or no real information and made outrageous claims of wealth to be had by everyone. Outfitters sprang up overnight that were happy to sell the stampeders whatever they needed to get started. This included food, clothing, tools and camping, mining and transportation equipment.

Helping the outfitters in this regard were the Northwest Mounted Police who required all stampeders to have one yearï¿½s supply of goods before they allowed them across the border into Canada. This was roughly one ton of goods per person. Towns such as Seattle made fortunes outfitting the miners. List of the supplies carried by a typical stampeder. The easiest and more expensive route to the gold fields was by boat upstream from the mouth of the Yukon in western Alaska. The most difficult route was the "All Canadian Route" from Edmonton and overland through the wilderness. Map of the Routes. The most common route taken by the stampeders to reach the fields was by boat from the west coast of the continental U.S. to Skagway in Alaska, over the Chilkoot or White Passes to the Yukon River at Whitehorse and then by boat 500 miles to Dawson City. The Chilkoot Pass trail was steep and hazardous. Rising 1,000 feet in the last ï¿½ mile, it was known as the "golden staircase": 1,500 steps carved out of snow and ice worked their way to the top of the pass.

Too steep for packhorses, stampeders had to "cache" their goods, moving their equipment piecemeal up the mountain. Stampeders who gave up often did it here, discarding their unneeded equipment on the side of the trail. Chilkoot and White Pass Map Conditions on the White Pass trail were even more horrendous. Steep, narrow and slick, over 3,000 pack animals died on the trail causing it to be dubbed the "dead horse trail". Those who made it across the passes found themselves at Bennett Lake. Here, boats had to be built to run the final 500 miles down the Yukon River to the gold fields. A three week trip, the miners had to survive many sets of rapids before making it to Dawson City. Many miners lost their lives or their possessions when their boats broke up in the rapids. Those who survived the perilous journey mostly found disappointment once they reached Dawson City. Locals had already claimed all of the gold-bearing creeks and claims of "gold for the taking" were grossly exaggerated. Many stampeders headed home, some worked for others on the claims and still others stayed to work in Dawson City.

The work that was necessary to retrieve the gold was incredible. Most of the gold was not at the surface, but rather 10 or more feet below. To reach it, the miners had to dig through the permafrost - the layer of permanently frozen ground. The ground had to be thawed before it could be dug. Then the dirt had to be sluiced to separate it from the gold. All digging had to be down during the summer as it was impossible to dig in the winter when temperatures could reach -60ï¿½F. It was incredibly difficult work. The biggest boom to hit this part of the world was a huge bust for the miners. The only ones to strike it rich were the merchants and profiteers who took advantage of those who hoped to "get rich quick". Read about the stern-wheeled boats that traveled on the water highways of the far north. Then read about the huge bucket-line gold dredges that replaced the hand dug holes and signified the end of the "stampede". Klondike Links: Klondike Gold Rush By Gary L.

Blackwood On August 16, 1896, George Washington Carmack and two Indian friends in the Yukon pried a nugget from the bed of Rabbit Creek, a tributary of Canada’s Klondike River, and set in motion one of the most frenzied and fabled gold rushes in history. Over the next two years, at least 100,000 eager would-be prospectors from all over the world set out for the new gold fields with dreams of a quick fortune dancing in their heads. Only about 40,000 actually made it to the Klondike, and precious few of them ever found their fortune. Swept along on this tide of gold seekers was a smaller and cannier contingent, also seeking their fortunes but in a far more practical fashion. They were the entrepreneurs, the men and women who catered to the Klondike fever. George Carmack, the man who began it all, was neither a die-hard prospector nor a keen businessman. The California native was simply in the right place at the right time. Not that this son of a Forty-Niner had anything against being rich.

But, like most of the white men who drifted north in the 1870s and ’80s, he came as much for the solitude as for the gold. Read More in Wild West Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! There had been rumors of gold in the Yukon as far back as the 1830s, but little was done about it. The harsh land and harsher weather, plus the Chilkoot Indians’ jealous guarding of their territory, effectively kept out most prospectors–until 1878, when a man named George Holt braved the elements and the Indians and came back with nuggets impressive enough to make other prospectors follow his lead. By 1880, there were perhaps 200 miners panning fine placer gold from the sandbars along the Yukon River. In 1885, gold was found in paying quantities on the bars of the Stewart River, south of the Klondike River. The next year, coarse gold was found on the Forty Mile River, and a trading post, called Fortymile, then sprang up where the river joins the Yukon River.

In 1893, a little farther down the Yukon, in Alaska, two Russian half-bloods hit pay dirt that produced $400,000 a year in gold, and spawned the boom town of Circle City. Known as ‘The Paris of Alaska,’ it boasted two theaters, eight dance halls, 28 saloons, a library and a school. But when news of the strike on Rabbit Creek (soon to be renamed Bonanza Creek) reached the citizens of Circle City, they decamped in droves. Only a year before Carmack’s lucky find, Canada had created the Yukon District as an administrative subunit within the Northwest Territories, and construction had begun on Fort Constantine (across from Fortymile), the first North-West Mounted Police post in the Yukon. So law enforcement was in place just in time to greet the droves of prospectors who would soon be stampeding to the Klondike region of the Yukon District, which would become a separate territory on June 13, 1898. Like his Indian friends, George Carmack believed in visions.

Shortly before his dramatic discovery, he had a vision in which two salmon with golden scales and gold nuggets for eyes appeared before him. So lacking in mercenary impulses was he that he interpreted this as a sign that he should take up salmon fishing. And that’s just what he was doing, along with his friends Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley, when a determined prospector named Robert Henderson floated down from upriver and, in keeping with the prospector’s code, told George about the ‘color’ he’d found on a creek he dubbed Gold Bottom Creek. But, he warned, glaring at Jim and Charley, he didn’t want any ‘damn Siwashes’ staking claims there. The three friends didn’t like Henderson’s attitude, and for two weeks they ignored his lead. Then, with nothing better to do, they meandered over to check out Henderson’s claim. Henderson insulted the Indians again by refusing to sell them tobacco. Indignant, George, Jim and Charley left and set up camp on Rabbit Creek. While cleaning a dishpan, one of the three unearthed the thumb-sized chunk of gold that set the great rush in motion.

Probably because of the insults, Carmack didn’t bother to hike the short distance back to Henderson’s diggings to tell him of the strike. Instead, he headed downriver the 50 or so miles to Fortymile to record his claim, and Jim’s and Charley’s. On the way, he bragged to everyone he saw of his good luck. Most of the old-timers just scoffed. Carmack had made’strikes’ before that amounted to nothing, earning him the nickname ‘Lying George,’ so they put little stock in this new bonanza of his. But a few cheechakos (newcomers) went to investigate, and the word spread. Within five days, the valley was swarming with prospectors. By the end of August, the whole length of Bonanza Creek was staked out in claims; then an even richer vein was found on a tributary that became known as Eldorado Creek. If all this had come about early in the year, the news would have reached civilization within a few weeks. But winter was already closing in. Once the rivers froze and the heavy snows fell, communication with the outside was nearly impossible.

William Ogilvie, a Canadian government surveyor, sent off two separate messages to Ottawa, telling of the magnitude of the strike, but both were lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. So it wasn’t until the following July (1897), when steamships from Alaska docked in San Francisco and Seattle–disgorging 68 ragged miners carrying more than 2 tons of gold in suitcases, boxes, blankets and coffee cans–that the outside world caught the Klondike fever. The fever quickly reached epidemic proportions. Like a worn-down body that’s susceptible to any disease that comes along, the country was particularly susceptible just then to gold fever. The amount of gold in circulation had dropped, helping to cause the deep economic depression that had been eating at the United States for 30 years. The Pacific Northwest had been hit especially hard. People were tired of being poor; many who had jobs quit them for the promise of greater rewards. Streetcar drivers abandoned their trolleys; a quarter of the Seattle police force walked out; even the mayor resigned and bought a steamboat to carry passengers to the Klondike.

Those who had no jobs mortgaged their homes or borrowed the $500 or so needed to buy an ‘outfit’–a stove, tent, tools, nails and enough supplies to last a year. A proper outfit tipped the scales at nearly 2,000 pounds–though one fast-talking salesman began hawking a valise that he claimed contained a year’s worth of desiccated food and weighed only 250 pounds!He was just one of a growing number of enterprising citizens who realized there was a fortune to be made right here at home, simply by selling a product, however dubious in value, with the name Klondike attached. There were Klondike medicine chests, Klondike electric gold pans, Klondike mining schools, a Klondike bicycle, even a portable Klondike house purported to be ‘light as air’ when folded up–a doubtful claim, considering it featured a double bed and an iron stove. Inventors dreamed up devices that promised to make the task of digging gold positively pleasant. Nikola Tesla, one of the pioneers of electricity, promoted an X-ray machine that would supposedly detect precious metals beneath the ground without all the trouble of digging.

A Trans-Alaskan Gopher Company proposed to train gophers to claw through frozen gravel and uncover nuggets. Clairvoyants touted their abilities to pinpoint rich lodes of gold. Several ventures were underway to invade the Klondike by balloon. Even as all these cockeyed schemes and services were being offered, there was one crucial commodity that was in desperately short supply–transportation. There weren’t nearly enough ships in the Northwest to handle the stampede of gold seekers–2,800 from Seattle alone in a single week. Everything that floated was pressed into service–ancient paddlewheelers and fishing boats, barges, coal ships still full of coal dust. All were overloaded, and many unseaworthy; they were dubbed ‘floating coffins,’ and all too often they lived up to the name. A few ships sailed around the Aleutians and through the Bering Sea to St. Michael, Alaska, on Norton Sound. The passengers could then take riverboats upstream from the Yukon River delta to the gold fields, a 1,600-mile trip on the winding Yukon. But not many Klondikers could afford the $1,000 fare.

Most boats went only as far as Skagway in the Alaska Panhandle, where the passengers and their outfits were unceremoniously dumped on the mile-wide tidal flats. If the Klondikers weren’t ready to turn back by then, there was plenty of adversity ahead to change their minds. Skagway itself was no beach resort. It was, in fact, a grimy anarchic tent town that a visiting Englishman described as ‘the most outrageously lawless quarter I have ever struck. ‘ There was a saloon or a con man, or both, on every corner, and gunfire in the streets was so commonplace as to be mostly ignored. The most famous of the con men was Jefferson Randolph (‘Soapy’) Smith, the ‘Uncrowned King of Skagway,’ who ran the town’s underworld until he died in a July 8, 1898, shootout. But even in this chaotic setting, legitimate businesses flourished. What the would-be miner needed by now was some way of getting his outfit to the gold fields, so anyone with a wagon and a team or a few mules could do well for himself–or herself.

Harriet Pullen, a widow with a brood of children, arrived in Skagway with $7 to her name, but parlayed it into a fortune by driving a freight outfit all day and, at night, baking apple pies in pans hammered out of old tin cans. She became the town’s most distinguished citizen. Joe Brooks, one of the most successful ‘packers,’ owned 335 mules and raked in $5,000 a day–far more than most men earned in a year. In keeping with the nature of the town, he wasn’t overly scrupulous; if he was hauling equipment for one customer and got a more tempting offer, he’d simply dump the first shipment alongside the trail. Read More in Wild West Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! In addition to the boat passage up the Yukon, there were at least five trails being touted as the best route to the gold fields. But three of those were so long and hazardous that only a few men ever succeeded in reaching the Klondike alive on them. The two most heavily traveled routes began in Skagway and the neighboring town of Dyea.

In the fall of 1897, the more popular was the 550-mile Skagway Trail over White Pass. At first glance, it seemed the less demanding of the two; it climbed more gradually, which meant that–in theory at least–pack animals could negotiate it. Once on the trail, miners found it nowhere near as easy as it looked. It led them through mudholes big enough to swallow an animal, over sharp rocks that tore at horses’ legs and hooves, across cliffs of slippery slate, where the trail was a scant 2 feet wide and a 500-foot drop awaited any animal–or miner–who made a misstep. Most of the pack animals were broken-down horses that would have been lucky to survive the trek under the best of conditions. Overburdened as they were by miners desperate to get their outfits over the pass as quickly as possible, they didn’t stand a chance. Before long, the trail was christened ‘Dead Horse Trail’ after the many carcasses that littered it. As writer Jack London described it, ‘The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps.

‘ If a horse gave out in the middle of the narrow trail, no one bothered to drag it away; it was simply ground into the earth by the endless parade of feet and hooves. Faced with this nightmare of mud and mayhem, thousands of miners turned back, sold their outfits, and retreated to civilization with spirits broken and pockets empty. But thousands more slogged on and reached Lake Bennett, the headwaters of the Yukon River. Only a very few made it before cold weather choked the lake and the river with ice. The rest were marooned on the shores of the lake until spring. When heavy snow made the Skagway Trail impassable, the growing flow of gold seekers switched to the Dyea Trail, also called the ‘Poor Man’s Trail’ because it was too steep for pack animals.

But even there, the Klondikers were forced to hire Indian packers, at as much as 50 cents a pound, or else lug their outfits themselves, 100 pounds at a time, leaving each load alongside the trail somewhere, then going back for the next load and so on, over and over; by the time a miner transferred his whole outfit to the far side of the pass, he might have walked the 40-mile trail 30 or 40 times, and spent three months doing it. The most daunting part was Chilkoot Pass, which lay at the top of a nearly vertical slope, four miles long. An unbroken stream of Klondikers toiled up it day and night–a total of 22,000 in the winter of 1897. It was an agonizing climb, and the worst of it was that each man had to repeat it again and again until his entire outfit was carried over the pass. The only consolation was that, between loads, he got a free ride down the snowy slope on the seat of his pants. For the entrepreneur, there was money to be made here, too.

Several roadhouses went up along the trail, including the grandly named Palmer House at the foot of the pass. Most were no more than large tents or ramshackle wooden structures, but they offered hot meals and a place to sleep, even if it was only on the floor. On the worst stretches of trail, an enterprising man could bridge a mudhole with logs and charge a fee to each miner who crossed. At the pass itself, several men laboriously chopped 1,500 steps in the hard-packed snow, then collected so much money in tolls that the route was dubbed ‘the Golden Stairs.’ Like the travelers on the Skagway Trail, those who crossed Chilkoot Pass ended up in a vast tent city on the shores of Lake Bennett and spent long months there, waiting for the thaw. Most passed the time cutting trees from the surrounding hillsides and sawing them into planks for boats that, in the spring, would take them down the Yukon River to the gold fields, still 500 miles away.

At the end of May 1898, the ice broke, and a flotilla of flimsy, handmade craft set off downriver, only to encounter one last deadly obstacle–Miles Canyon. The ferocious rapids in the canyon smashed boats to splinters on the rocks, so many of them that the North-West Mounted Police decreed that every boat had to be inspected and then guided through by a competent pilot. A few experienced sailors got substantial grubstakes by taking boats through the canyon at up to $100 a trip. Among them was Jack London, who netted a cool $3,000. The boats had one more stretch of rapids to endure, and then the Yukon stayed pretty tame all the way to Dawson City. Before the fall of 1896, Dawson didn’t exist. When gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek, a tent camp went up at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. By the following summer, its population had grown to 5,000. A year later, after the Klondike fever spread worldwide, it swelled to 40,000–becoming one of the largest cities in Canada.

Thanks to the North-West Mounted Police, it was a far more law-abiding town than Skagway, though there were only 19 Mounties in the Yukon in late 1896. By November 1898, however, there would be 285. In the summer of 1897, the Mounties’ new headquarters became Fort Herchmer, at Dawson. Detachments were established atop White and Chilkoot passes. The Mounties’ main function was collecting customs duty for supplies brought into Canada by the gold seekers. In addition, between 1898 and 1900, a 200-man militia outfit, known as the Yukon Field Force, also operated in the area, helping the North-West Mounted Police to guard gold shipments, banks and prisoners. Despite the presence of law enforcement officers, the flood of new gold seekers still generally found the Yukon just another stage of Hell.

After a miserable, cramped sea voyage, after a weary trek across mosquito-infested bogs and over glaciers, after interminable months spent courting frostbite in a flimsy tent, they had finally reached the fabled gold fields, only to find that all the land along every gold-bearing creek had long since been staked out. For many of them, this was the final blow; they sold their outfits and headed home. Those who stayed felt lucky to find jobs in the bustling town or working someone else’s claim for $17 a day in gold dust–good wages on the outside, but barely a living here. But if Dawson dashed the dreams of the gold seekers, for those few who’d had the foresight to bring goods to sell, the town was a gold mine. The old timers who had spent the winter there, subsisting on a diet of beans and biscuits at best, were eager to trade their gold for luxuries like eggs, fruit, writing paper, or just a bit of news from the outside. One newcomer sold a months-old copy of a Seattle newspaper, soaked with bacon grease, for $15. As Dawson grew, so did the fortunes of those who made the right business decisions.

While most men devoted their energies to working a single claim, Alex McDonald, a Nova Scotian whose shy, awkward manner belied a canny business sense, bought up the claims of discouraged miners and hired others to work them for him. He earned $5 million and the title ‘King of the Klondike’ without ever lifting a pick or shovel. The ‘Queen of the Klondike,’ Belinda Mulroney, took another route to riches. She arrived in the Klondike in the spring of 1897 with $5,000 worth of cotton clothing and hot-water bottles, which she sold for $30,000. Next, she opened a lunch counter and, with the profits, hired men to build cabins that sold before the roofs were on. A successful roadhouse near the gold fields followed. But that was not ambitious enough for Mulroney. She went on to build the grandest hotel in the Klondike–the Fairview, which boasted brass beds, fine china, cut-glass chandeliers and chamber music in the lobby, even electricity generated by the engine of a yacht anchored in the harbor.

For a brief time, Belinda and Big Alex became partners in a scheme to salvage the cargo of a wrecked steamboat. Crafty Alex got to the wreck first and made off with the most valuable supplies, leaving Belinda only some cases of whiskey and a large inventory of rubber boots. ‘You’ll pay through the nose for this,’ she promised, and, as usual, she got her way. When the spring thaw turned the ground in the gold fields to mush, McDonald was in dire need of boots for his men, and Mulroney was happy to provide them–at $100 a pair. Mulroney went on to become the only women manager of a mining company, the largest in Yukon Territory. But life in Dawson had become too tame for the Queen of the Klondike. When news came of a bigger gold strike in Nome, Alaska, she headed down the Yukon to conquer this new region. So did most of the population of Dawson. During one week in August 1899, 8,000 people deserted Dawson for the beaches of Nome. Just three years after the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, the great gold rush was over.

Of the 40,000 people who reached Dawson, only about 15,000 actually had the grit to work the gold fields; of those, about a quarter actually unearthed any gold, and only a handful of them became wealthy. Of that handful, a very few managed to hang onto their wealth. Most gambled or drank it away. Big Alex McDonald became obsessed with buying up unwanted claims and eventually found himself stuck with a lot of worthless real estate. He died broke and alone. Belinda Mulroney married a fake French count and lived in style for several years, until her husband invested her money in a European steamship company–on the eve of World War I, which put an end to merchant shipping. She, too, died nearly penniless. Tagish Charley sold his claim, spent the proceeds lavishly, and died an alcoholic. Shookum Jim wasn’t content with the riches he’d made; he spent the rest of his life searching in vain for another strike equal to the one on Bonanza Creek. Ironically, George Carmack, who had never had much use for money, was one of the few miners who managed to keep and even increase his fortune by investing in businesses and real estate.

He was still a wealthy man when he died in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1922. Although the heyday of the individual prospector ended with the rush to Alaska in 1899, a more subtle and more profitable exploitation of the Klondike began. The new railroad line from Skagway was completed that summer, opening up the area to the big mining companies with their mechanical dredges, which did the work of hundreds of miners. They continued to mine the land the gold seekers had abandoned for another 50 years, and unearthed millions more in gold. Once again, the men of business had triumphed. Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! This article was written by Gary L. Blackwood and originally appeared in the August 1997 issue of Wild West. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today! Unique Facts about Canada: Klondike Gold Rush The Klondike Gold Rush The Klondike Gold Rush was a frenzy of gold rush immigration to and gold prospecting in the Klondike near Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada, after gold was discovered in the late 19th century.

In August 1896, three people led by Skookum Jim Mason (a member of the Tagish nation whose birth name was Keish) headed up the Yukon River from the Carcross area looking for his sister Kate and her husband George Carmack. The party included Skookum Jim, Skookum Jim's cousin known as Dawson Charlie (or sometimes Tagish Charlie) and his nephew Patsy Henderson. After meeting up with George and Kate who were fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Klondike River, they ran into Nova Scotian Robert Henderson who had been mining gold on the Indian River, just south of the Klondike. Henderson told George Carmack about where he was mining and that he did not want any "damn Siwashes" (meaning Indians) near him. The group then headed a few miles up the Klondike River to Rabbit Creek, now Bonanza Creek to hunt moose. On August 16, 1896, the party discovered rich placer gold deposits in Bonanza (Rabbit) Creek. It is now generally accepted that Skookum Jim made the actual discovery, but some accounts say that it was Kate Carmack.

George Carmack was officially credited for the discovery because the "discovery" claim was staked in his name. The group agreed to this because they felt that other miners would be reluctant to recognise a claim made by an Indian, given the strong racist attitudes of the time. Further evidence of Skookum Jim's discovery is that he was eagerly followed by other miners and caused a mini rush when he later staked some claims in the Kluane Lake area in 1905. Miners and prospectors climb the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush. From the Canadian National Archives. The news spread to other mining camps in the Yukon River valley, and the Bonanza, Eldorado and Hunker Creeks were rapidly staked by miners who had been previously working creeks and sandbars on the Fortymile and Stewart Rivers. In a fate that many believe to be poetic justice, Henderson, who was mining only a few miles away over the hill, only found out about the discovery after the rich creeks had been all staked. News reached the United States on July 17, 1897 when the first successful prospectors arrived in Seattle, and within a month the Klondike stampede had begun.

The population in the Klondike in 1898 may have reached 40,000, threatening to cause a famine. Most prospectors landed at Skagway at the head of Lynn Canal and crossed by the Chilkoot Trail or White Pass to Bennett Lake. Here, prospectors built boats that would take them the final 500 miles (800 km) down the Yukon River to the gold fields. Stampeders had to carry one ton of goods over the pass to be allowed to enter Canada. At the top of the passes, the stampeders encountered a Mountie post that enforced that regulation. It was put in place to avert shortages like those that had occurred in the previous two winters in Dawson City. The Chilkoot Pass was steep and hazardous, rising a thousand feet in the last half mile (300 m in 800 m). It was too steep for pack animals and prospectors had to pack their equipment and supplies to the top. Some 1,500 steps were carved into the ice to aid travel up the pass.

Miner's camp at the head of the Yukon River during the Klondike Gold Rush, from the Canadian National Archives Even though it was not as high, conditions on White Pass were even worse. It was known as the Dead Horse Trail with about 3,000 animals dying along the route. Others took the Copper River Trail or the Teslin Trail by Stikine River and Teslin Lake, and some used the all-Canadian Ashcroft and Edmonton trails. The other main route was by steamer about 2600 kilometers (1600 miles) up the Yukon River. Many using this route late in 1897 were caught by winter ice below Fort Yukon, Alaska and had to be rescued. An estimated 100,000 people participated in the gold rush and about 30,000 made it to Dawson City in 1898. By 1901, when the first census was taken, the population had declined to 9,000.

Throughout this period, the North West Mounted Police, under the command of Sam Steele maintained a firm grip on the activities of the prospectors to ensure the safety of the population as well as enforcing the laws and sovereignty of Canada. As a result, this gold rush has been described as the most peaceful and orderly of its type in history. The effectiveness of the Mounties in this period made the police force famous around the world, and ensured the survival of the organization at a time when its continued operation was being debated in the Canadian Parliament. The gold rush remains an important event in the history of the city of Edmonton, which to this day celebrates Klondike Days, an annual summer fair with a Klondike gold rush theme. Among the many to take part in the gold rush was writer Jack London, whose books White Fang and The Call of the Wild were influenced by his northern experiences, and adventurer "Swiftwater" Bill Gates. Klondike Gold Rush - The Canadian Encyclopedia Historical Klondike Gold Rush The discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 led to a stampede to the Klondike region between 1897 and 1899.

This led to the establishment of Dawson City (1896) and subsequently, the Yukon Territory (1898). The discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 led to a stampede to the Klondike region between 1897 and 1899. This led to the establishment of Dawson City (1896) and subsequently, the Yukon Territory (1898). The Klondike gold rush solidified the public’s image of the North as more than a barren wasteland and left a body of literature that has popularized and romanticized the Yukon. History The search for gold in the Yukon started in 1874 with the arrival of a small handful of prospectors. Among them were Arthur Harper, Al Mayo and Jack McQuesten (the former an Irish immigrant, the latter Americans). The three became traders because they couldn’t make a living as prospectors at that time. These men encouraged, promoted and then supplied the burgeoning prospecting community that developed slowly before the gold rush.

At first a trickle, then a steadily increasing stream of hopeful prospectors entered the Yukon River basin, spurred on by the increasingly promising reports of gold on the bars of the Yukon and its tributaries: the Stewart River (1885), the Fortymile River (1886), the Sixtymile (1891) and finally Birch Creek, near Circle City, Alaska (1892). By 1896, there were 1,600 prospectors seeking gold within the Yukon River basin. Gold was discovered in mid-August 1896 by George Carmack, an American prospector, Keish (aka Skookum Jim Mason) and Káa Goox (aka Dawson Charlie) — Tagish First Nation members into whose family Carmack had married. The discovery was made on Rabbit Creek, a small tributary of the Klondike River. It was soon renamed Bonanza Creek, a name that became world famous. When word of the discovery reached the outside world in July 1897, it sparked an unprecedented stampede.

Tens of thousands of would-be prospectors left their homes all over the world, though mainly from the United States, and headed for the Klondike. Joseph Ladue, an American who had been in the Yukon since 1882, operated a trading post on the Yukon River, 70 km above the mouth of the Klondike. While others staked claims for gold, Ladue was quick to capitalize on the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek. He staked out 65 hectares of swamp and moose pasture at the mouth of the Klondike River, called it Dawson City (after the famous Canadian geologist, George Mercer Dawson ), and made a fortune selling lots and the lumber to build on them. The stampede was an epic journey during which numerous challenges had to be met, and countless obstacles overcome. First, there was the harrowing voyage north along the Pacific coast from coastal cities such as Victoria, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, which ended upon arrival at the coastal Alaskan ports of Haines, Skagway and Dyea.

Haines was near the start of the Dalton Trail; Skagway, a lawless town run by the notorious Soapy Smith and his band of thieves, was the beginning of the White Pass Trail. Dyea was the starting point for the most famous gold rush trail of all: the Chilkoot . Images of a never-ending stream of men labouring up the icy steps of the final ascent to the Chilkoot Pass summit have come to symbolize the challenges not just of the trail to the Klondike, but of life itself. Thousands, burdened by heavy loads, made the ascent across the rocky summit 30 or 40 times in order to haul the tonne of supplies (enough to last a prospector for a year) that the North West Mounted Police required each stampeder to bring with him. The stampeders laboured over a trail clogged with ice, snow and people; avalanche, drowning and disease; exhaustion, failure and heartbreak. Over the mountains and down the icy valleys along the Chilkoot and the White Pass Trails, they laboured until they reached the headwaters of the Yukon River.

By the time the stampeders had relayed their tonne of supplies the 53 km over the Chilkoot Trail to Bennett, some had trekked as much as 4,000 km. At the boom town of Bennett, on the shores of Bennett Lake, the horde climbed aboard a hastily built fleet of rafts, scows and boats to float down 800 km of treacherous lakes and winding rivers, through canyons and rapids, to reach Dawson City. At Dawson City, they found a bustling and rapidly growing city at the mouth of the Klondike River where scruffy Klondike millionaire veterans (a year’s residence in the Yukon entitled them to bear the name ‘Sourdough’) rubbed shoulders with newly arrived Cheechako (a Cheechako could only earn the title of sourdough after having survived an Arctic winter). It was a place where the mundane was surrounded by the larger-than-life episodes of a grand adventure. Upon arrival, many never even bothered to look for gold. By the time the stampeders arrived in the Klondike to search for gold, it was too late to leave because the summers are short in the North.

Each man (there were few women in Dawson at first) had to build shelter for the winter, and then endure seven months of cold, darkness, disease, isolation and monotony. For those lucky enough to find gold, nothing was beyond limits. Many successful prospectors lived extravagantly. For the majority, however, life was about survival and their existence was tedious. Pay streaks meandered unpredictably through frozen gravel in the valley bottoms. Some miners became rich, while others found nothing. Newcomers were obliged to work along the margins of the creeks that were already staked. Some were fortunate to secure bench claims (on the hillsides above the creeks) which the sourdoughs deemed worthless. Many of these claims proved to be as rich as the creek claims below. The population of the Klondike dwindled from the 25,000 or more during the hey-day of the gold rush, to a few hundred within a decade. A century later, however, gold mining is still the economic mainstay of the region.

Impact If the nearly $29 million (figure unadjusted) in gold that was recovered during the heady years of 1897 to 1899 was divided equally among all of those who participated in the gold rush, the amount would fall far short of the total that they had invested, in time and money, to reach the Klondike. The continental economy, however, which had been locked in a depression and plagued by unemployment, benefited from the spending during the gold rush. The Klondike gold rush brought about a rapid advance in the development of the Yukon Territory, which was officially formed by Parliament on 13 June 1898. The gold rush left an infrastructure of supply, support and governance that led to the continued development of the territory. Had it not been for the discovery of gold, development of this region would have been a slow and gradual process. The gold rush brought tremendous upheaval and disenfranchisement for the people indigenous to the region. The Han people of the Yukon valley were pushed aside and marginalized. Only a century later, as a result of land claim settlements have the Tr’ondëk Hwech’in found redress and self-governance.

The most lasting legacy of the Klondike gold rush is the impression it left in the public mind. It was a shared experience which all participants faced, rich or poor, on a relatively similar footing, and which left its mark indelibly etched in their memories. Words like Klondike and Chilkoot evoke images of gold, adventure, challenge and the North. There is a Klondike ice cream bar and a Chilkoot automobile. Towns, streets and schools have been named after the Klondike as well. The adventures of the gold rush were also captured in popular literature in the writings of people such as Jack London, Robert Service and Pierre Berton . Their writing, and that of hundreds of others, has ensured that the Klondike gold rush will not be soon forgotten.

Suggested Reading Tappan Adney, The Klondike Stampede (1900) Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush (1958) Pierre Berton, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush (1972) Michael Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon (1994) David Neufeld and Frank Norris, Chilkoot Trail: Heritage Route to the Klondike (1996) Links to other sites ::: The Klondike Gold Rush ::: The Klondike Gold Rush Dawson Sled team On August 16, 1896 Yukon-area Indians Skookum Jim Mason and Tagish Charlie, along with Seattleite George Carmack found gold in Rabbit Creek, near Dawson, in the Yukon region of Canada. The creek was promptly renamed Bonanza Creek, and many of the locals started staking claims. Gold was literally found all over the place, and most of these early stakeholders (who became known as the "Klondike Kings") became wealthy. Since the Yukon was so remote, word of this find spread relatively slowly for almost a year.

On July 17, 1897, eleven months after the initial discovery of gold, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle from Dawson with "more than a ton of gold", according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. With that pronouncement, the Klondike Gold Rush was on! Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers set off for the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the trip. Many Klondikers died, or lost enthusiasm and either stopped where they were, or turned back along the way. The trip was long, arduous, and cold. Klondikers had to walk most of the way, using either pack animals or sleds to carry hundreds of pounds of supplies. The Northwest Mounted Police in Canada required that all Klondikers bring a year's worth of supplies with them. Even so, starvation and malnutrition were serious problems along the trail. The story of the Klondiker who boiled his boots to drink the broth was widely reported, and may well have been true. Cold was another serious problem along the trail.

Winter temperatures in the mountains of northern British Columbia and the Yukon were normally -20 degrees F., and temperatures of -50 degrees F. were not unheard of. Tents were usually the warmest shelter a Klondiker could hope for. Blockade of Klondikers An even larger problem was the trails themselves. Klondikers had two choices: the Chilkoot Trail or the White Pass Trail. The White Pass Trail originated in Skagway, Alaska, where Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, a con-man from Denver, had taken over the town. Smith had set up operations in a saloon/casino called Jeff's Place and led a gang of 300 men, whom he referred to as his "lambs" to fleece Klondikers arriving to take part in the gold rush. He also perpetrated the first telegraph scam in Alaska. Smith put up poles and wires, but they weren't actually connected to anything. Nevertheless, he took cash from Klondikers eager to wire home. The Chilkoot Trail, on the other hand, wasn't a better option, although it had fewer outlaws. It was steeper than the White Pass Trail, and few were fully prepared for how difficult it was.

Many suffered malnutrition and/or died along the trails. Some Klondikers became sick or died from eating the meat of the dead horses found on the White Pass Trail, and it soon became known as the "Dead Horse Trail". Men reportedly went insane on the trail. It is possible that this diet (or lack thereof) contributed to the reports of insanity. With the influx of the 30,000 who did make it over the trails, Dawson temporarily became the largest city north of San Francisco. It was no longer a tent city, but a bona-fide city, with more amenities than one might imagine. Dawson had fire hydrants on the streets, and was the first city in western Canada to have electric lights. People also felt safe in Dawson. The Northwest Mounted Police kept order in Canada, and nefarious characters such as Soapy Smith were not allowed entry. The growth of Dawson was largely responsible for the creation of the Yukon Territory as a new Canadian Province on June 13, 1898. Nor was Dawson the only Canadian city to have dramatic growth due to the Klondike Gold Rush. Vancouver, British Columbia saw its population double, and in Alberta, Edmonton's population tripled.

Bar at Opera House The Klondike Kings quickly became very rich. It is estimated that over one billion dollars worth of gold was found, adjusted to late 20th century standards. Others found their fame and fortune in different manners. Jack London became well-known by writing of his experiences in the Klondike. Fred Trump, grandfather of late 20th century billionaire Donald Trump, earned his fortune running the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel in Bennett, British Columbia, along the Chilkoot Trail. Nor were the successful Klondikers limited to men. Like Fred Trump, Belinda Mulroney became wealthy by running a hotel and selling supplies. Many women found their riches running dance halls. Martha Black bought a sawmill and went on to become Canada's second female Member of Parliament. Even some those who didn't travel to the Klondike managed to get rich from the Gold Rush. Over 1,000 miles away, Seattle businesses made over $1 million (not adjusted) selling the needed food and supplies for the trip to the gold fields. Seattle mayor W.D. Wood should have stayed in Seattle and taken advantage of the wealth the Klondikers brought to the city.

Instead, he resigned his post as mayor and set off for the Yukon. He was one of the many who turned back. Exhausted Stampeder Unfortunately for those who did make it as far as the Klondike, few found the hoped-for riches. By the time the masses arrived, all the creeks had been claimed, and the new arrivals found they had to work for the Klondike Kings, rather than for themselves. The pay was not bad, ranging from $1-10 per day, but this was not what the Klondikers had made the trip for. Many Klondikers never recouped the cost of the trip, which averaged $1200 (not adjusted). Nevertheless, when gold was discovered at Nome, Alaska in 1899, few of these Klondikers stopped to think about what they had just experienced. At the first sign of gold, much of Dawson up and left for Nome, where most of the gold-seekers once again lost out on finding fame and fortune.

The Klondike Gold Rush Additional gold information The Klondike Gold Rush The Klondike gold rush started in 1897, when Jim Mason, Tagish Charlie, and George Carmack, returned from the Yukon and declared their discovery of gold. Jim Mason was a well-known wilderness guide, who fought hand and foot with a bear during his adventures. Tagish Charlie was the nephew of Jim Mason. George Carmack, the third miner, was unpopular in the mining community. Carmack quickly earned the nickname “Squaw Man” for his exaggerated stories and claims. Six months after the men discovered gold, over 100,000 miners were on their way to the Yukon. Unfortunately, only 30,000 of these miners would successfully complete the trip. “Outfitting” companies sprung up all over the place, selling supplies, such as: mining tools, transportation supplies and food. Cities such as Seattle made a small fortune in the business of outfitting during this time period. Reaching the Yukon gold fields wasn’t an easy task. The easiest way to reach the gold fields was by boat; traveling up the mouth of the Yukon river.

This transportation method, however, was also the most expensive. The most challenging route was called the “Canadian Route.” This route traveled through Edmonton, weaving through thick wilderness and difficult traveling conditions. The most popular route originated on the West Coast of North America. Miners traveled to Skagway Alaska, through the Yukon River at Whitehorse and then boaters traveled approximately 500 miles to the city of Dawson. This route was dangerous. As miners approached the White Pass trail, it narrowed and became very slick. With over 3,000 pack animals dying on the trail, miners named the trail “dead horse trail.” Unfortunately, the brave miners who conquered dangerous traveling conditions found disappointment as they reached the city of Dawson. Locals had already claimed the best gold sites, and stories about gold discovery were exaggerated. Even for experienced miners, working conditions were difficult. Gold was covered by layers of permafrost, which is permanently frozen ground. The ground had to be thawed before the miners could start the mining process. Also, digging had to be done during the warmer summer months. The winter months reached unbearable temperatures of -60 F or less, making work very dangerous.

Miners that were lucky enough to find gold had to deal with Jefferson Smith (nicknamed “Soap”). Accompanied by a gang of 100 followers, he was known for conning miners out of their money. His followers posed as clergymen or newspaper reporters and directed the miners to Soap’s fraudulent businesses, where the miners were robbed. Soap, however, met his match when he robbed a minor of $2,800 worth of gold. Instead of dismissing the incident, the miner rallied local community members and the leader of the group, Frank Reid, shot Soap fatally. In 1899, disappointed Yukon miners learned about a new gold prospect; the Nome Gold Rush. Gold found in Nome was discovered in a remote beach area. Thousands of minors stomped over the top of the gold before ever making the gold discovery. During the early stages of mining, no gold was being found. Then, rumors started to spread that people were finding gold (which wasn’t true). Complete chaos broke lose. Claim jumping and litigation over claim rights was out of control. However, while miners were bickering over claim rights, a few cleaver miners decided to pan on the beach, and struck gold.

During the summer of 1899, over two million dollars of gold was found in the area. Additional resources on the Klondike Gold Rush can be found at the following sites: Klondike Gold Rush; About the Klondike Gold Rush; Yukon Adventure The Klondike Gold Rush Discover the history behind the world’s last great gold rush… Before 1896, only First Nations peoples and the hardiest of fur traders, prospectors, missionaries and North West Mounted Police officers ventured into the Yukon Territory. But in two short years, the people, the history and even the landforms of Yukon would be profoundly altered. From a pre-gold rush figure of fewer than 5,000 people, the population of Yukon would soar to over 30,000 in 1898. And a land, which had not even been drawn on maps one century before, would become the place to be in North America, and arguably the world. The Klondike Gold Rush was the most publicized gold rush in history. Newspapers and magazines were filled with the tales of Yukon adventurers, miners and Mounties, and the hardships and windfalls of the gold rush stampeders.

The Klondike attracted, and was immortalized, by many of the best writers of the era including Jack London, Robert Service and Tappan Adney. The characters surrounding the Klondike Gold Rush are still the stuff of legends and dreams. The discovery and discoverers of gold in the Klondike continue to be surrounded by controversial and sometimes conflicting stories. According to the oral traditions of the Tagish First Nations people, the gold rush story begins when Skookum Jim, Dawson Charlie and Patsy Henderson travelled down the Yukon River from Tagish, in the southern Yukon. They were looking for Jim’s sister and George Carmack’s wife, Shaaw Thia, also known as Kate. Well before his trip to the Klondike, Skookum Jim had a dream in which his spirit helper, frog, appeared in the form of Wealth Woman. She gave him a golden walking stick and told him he would discover his fortune in the north. After finding Kate and George Carmack, Skookum Jim and the others were fishing in the Klondike River.

It was July when veteran gold-seeker Robert Henderson approached the group and told Carmack about some good prospects he had found on Gold Bottom Creek in the Klondike River Valley. According to the unwritten code of the miner, Henderson had to share his knowledge of potential finds with whomever he met. Carmack asked whether there was a chance that he could stake a claim. In a voice that was overheard by Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie, Henderson replied that Carmack was welcome, but not his First nations brothers-in-law. In early August, the group poled their boat up Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike. They went over the dome that separated the creeks and visited Robert Henderson’s camp at Gold Bottom. Henderson once again insulted the First Nations men by refusing to sell them tobacco. “His obstinacy”, Carmack later recalled, “cost him a fortune.” The group headed back to Rabbit Creek and panned out a few encouraging traces of gold. Then, in place where the bedrock was exposed, someone found a nugget the size of a dime.

Energized by the find, they turned over loose pieces of rock and found gold that, according to Carmack, lay thick between the flaky slabs like cheese sandwiches. The date was August 16, 1896. George Carmack, Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie staked their claims the next day and renamed the creek “Bonanza”. The men headed downstream to the community of Fortymile to register their claims, but they never travelled over the dome to tell Henderson of their find. Henderson stayed on Gold Bottom Creek for another three weeks. By the time he caught wind of the great discovery, the best locations on Bonanza Creek had been staked. A staking rush began that brought prospectors from all over Yukon and Alaska. On August 31, 1896 gold was discovered on Eldorado Creek, a tributary of Bonanza. Eldorado was no more than five miles long and produced over 30 million dollars worth of gold (an amount estimated at 3675 million U.S. in 1988 dollars).

But the world didn’t know what was happening in Yukon until July 14, 1897 when the steamship Excelsior landed in San Francisco. On board was over a half a million dollars worth of Klondike gold. News of the great discovery travelled over the wires like wildfire. When the steamer Portland landed in Seattle three days later a crowd of 5,000 greeted the 68 miners on board. Over a million dollars worth of gold was carried down the gangplank in a battered assortment of suitcases and rope-tied bags. The Klondike Gold Rush was on. It’s a matter of ongoing speculation why the Klondike Gold Rush captured the imagination of so many people. The world was under the influence of severe recession at the time. The idea of the North American frontier, which had brought so many people from the Old World to the New, was still a fresh concept in the minds of the American populace. This was the land of the entrepreneur, the adventurer, the innovator and the fortune hunter.

In a time where there was little food news, the press played on the sensational wealth of the Klondike prospectors and created the idea of a land where riches just lay in the ground for anyone to dig up and carry away. Tens of thousands of people took the bait, and they packed their bags for Dawson City. Steamship companies were swamped with enquiries, suppliers couldn’t keep up with the demand for Klondike outfits and newspapers debated the relative merits of the different routes to the Klondike. Although steamers could travel along the Inside Passage, around the cost of Alaska and then up the Yukon River all the way to Dawson City, this route was very expensive and it was nearly impossible to book a ticket on the Yukon River boats. Among the other exhausting and often life-threatening routes to the Klondike, it was the Chilkoot and the White Pass trails that became the most popular paths to Dawson City.

From the start of the Chilkoot Trail, at Dyea, to the end, at Lake Lindeman, was only a distance of 32 kilometers (2Omi) – but it was a climb of 1,067 meters (3,500 ft), some of it at a nearly 40 degree angle. The White Pass was not as steep, and it was lower than the Chilkoot, but it stretched over 72 kilometers (45 mi). At the top of the Chilkoot trail, on the summit of the pass, was a wind blasted NWMP post that enforced the policy that each stampeder had to carry one year’s supply of food and living materials into Canada. This amounted to close to one tone of live saving supplies. Thus the treacherous trail was made even more arduous (and tedious) by the fact that the average stampeder needed to make this trip 20 times in order to ferry all of his of her goods to Lindeman. The stampeders who made it over the Chilkoot and White Pass gathered at Lake Lindeman and Bennett Lake in the winter of 1897/8.

They still needed to travel over 800 kilometers (500 mi) to Dawson City, but the rest of their journey would be by water. A flurry of boat building denuded the surrounding hillside of trees. When the ice went out on the lakes on May 29 of that year, a rag-tag flotilla of 7,000 barges, rafts and homemade plank ships began their journey to Dawson. When this armada reached Dawson they discovered that all the claims had been staked two years before. Many of the stampeders headed back as soon as they arrived. Others stayed and found wealth in different enterprises. Fortunes were made in Dawson, but many were also lost. Some of the richest Yukon citizens were the business people who sold the stampeders goods and services. There was no shortage of moneymaking schemes and the desperation that fuelled them – a couple of entrepreneurs even hit on the idea of sifting gold dust from the dirt beneath the floors and foundations of the saloons.

In 1898, the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers had been transformed from a small fishing camp used by the Han First Nations people, into Dawson City, the largest and most cosmopolitan Canadian city west of Winnipeg. On sale in the streets of Dawson were French champagnes, oysters, the finest Paris fashions, porcelain, parasols, lacquer work and imported delicacies. But the Klondike Gold Rush ended as quickly as it began. In the summer of 1899, gold was discovered in the sandy beaches of Nome, Alaska. Many of the people who had arrived too late to stake claims in the Klondike left immediately for the “new Eldorado”. Ironically, the greatest year for gold production in Yukon was 1900. Over 22 million dollars worth of gold was extracted, in contrast to the $2.5 million of 1897 and the $10 million of 1898. The Klondike Gold Rush marked the end of a decade and the end of an era. Soon after, gold mining was taken over by corporations and government who could make the investment in complex machinery.

The Klondike Gold Rush brought out the best and the worst in the people that followed its call -it remains a fascinating enigma to this day. One of the last manifestations of the dream of the North American frontier, the Klondike was seen as a place where any person could make his or her fortune by exploring unopened territory. The concept of frontier has become a myth or an idealized notion. But the vestiges of the Klondike quest are still to be seen and sensed in the landmarks of Yukon – from the summit of the Chilkoot Trail to the boardwalks of Dawson City. THE KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH TIMELINE August 16, 1896 Gold Fever!--Determining the Facts 1 Determining the Facts Reading 1: The Rush for Gold Seattle, Washington, buzzed with excitement on July 17, 1897. Word had come over the telegraph wires two days earlier that the S.S. Portland was heading into Puget Sound from St. Michael, Alaska, with more than a ton of gold in her hold.

The gold strike had begun quietly on August 17, 1896, when three miners found gold in the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon. News of the strike spread slowly over the next year until miners began to return with their fortunes. On board the Portland were 68 miners and their stores of gold. The local newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, sent reporters on a tugboat to interview the miners before they docked along the Seattle waterfront. Excited by the promise of catching a glimpse of gold, 5,000 people came down to the docks to see the miners and their treasure. The crowd was not disappointed. As the miners made their way down the gangplank, they hired spectators to help unload their gold. In a matter of hours, Seattle was swept with a case of gold fever. The great Klondike Gold Rush in Yukon Territory was on, as people dropped everything to head for the gold fields.

Seattle's Pioneer Square, the area of the town's first settlement, welcomed thousands of prospective miners, known as "stampeders." Merchants and ticket agents were beset with stampeders anxious to find transportation to the gold fields and to purchase supplies called "outfits." Store owners quickly stocked up with goods the prospectors would need and urged them to take advantage of their competitive prices. On average, an outfit for two people cost $250 to $500 and included such items as heavy clothing and boots; nonperishable foods like smoked bacon, beans, rice, and dried fruit; personal items like soap and razor blades; and mining tools. Stampeders had to buy enough supplies to last for several months because there were few, if any, opportunities to replenish supplies on the way to the gold fields. By early September, 9,000 people and 3,600 tons of freight had left Seattle for the Klondike. Seattle became a temporary home to thousands of people as they feverishly planned their trip north. Steamers taking passengers to Alaska were over booked and often dangerously overcrowded. Even so, many people who came to Seattle were forced to wait weeks before space became available at all.

Merchants welcomed the flood tide of customers to the city, but hotel rooms and boardinghouses became scarce. Whether arriving by boat or train, newcomers flocked to Pioneer Square to find a "flop" (a bed). Spare rooms, basements, and attics were converted to living quarters for stampeders awaiting transportation to Skagway, Alaska and other points north. Pioneer Square offered filling meals and many amusements for those who had the time or the money to spare. Hungry stampeders could purchase a meal at one of the many restaurants, cafes, and eateries throughout the business district. Gambling halls, variety theaters, and saloons catered to the whims of many. Adding to the neighborhood's rough-and-tumble reputation, some dishonest people sold prospectors goods they did not need or substituted poor quality food for the better quality items the stampeders thought they were purchasing. One of the immediate concerns of the stampeders was the route they would take to the gold fields. Few had any idea of how far they would have to travel after they left Seattle. Many were astonished to find that the Klondike strike was not in Alaska but across the Canadian border into the Yukon Territory.

Since many of the stampeders were poor, they had to take the less expensive but extremely difficult route up to the Alaskan panhandle and over mountains to the Yukon River and then to Dawson, the town closest to the gold fields. Those who could afford the easier, all-water route, traveled to the delta of the Yukon River and then down the river to Dawson. Most stampeders who set out in the fall would not even reach the gold fields until the following spring because the Yukon River had frozen and the mountain trails from Skagway and Dyea, Alaska, were almost impassable. Most would return to Seattle in a year or two--some with riches, but most poorer than when they started. Others died before ever seeing the gold fields. Questions for Reading 1 1. How was Seattle linked to the Klondike gold strike? What changes did the gold rush bring to Seattle? 2. Why did it take so long for news of the gold strike to spread? 3. What businesses grew because of the Klondike Gold Rush? 4. Using Map 1 as well as Reading 1, describe the routes stampeders could take to the gold fields. Why did it take so long to reach the gold fields? 5.

If you were a stampeder, what problems might you have faced once you arrived in Seattle? Reading 1 was adapted from The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898: A Teacher's Guide to the Last Grand Adventure (Seattle: Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, 1993); Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958); and Elizabeth Rider Montgomery, When a Ton of Gold Reached Seattle (Champaign, IL: Garrard Publishing Company).

Question: What area of the Yukon Territory experienced the gold rush of 1897?
Answer: Klondike