Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush was a frenzy of gold rush immigration to and gold prospecting along the Klondike River near Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada, after gold was discovered in the late 19th century.

Discovery

In August 1896, three people led by Skookum Jim Mason (a member of the Tagish nation whose birth name was Keish) headed north, down 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.

The stampede begins

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. Robert 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 in July, 1897, when the first successful prospectors arrived in San Francisco on the 15th and in Seattle on the 17th, setting off the Klondike stampede. The population in the Klondike in 1898 may have reached 40 000 threatening to cause a famine.

Most prospectors landed at Skagway, Alaska, or the then adjacent town of Dyea, Alaska, both located at the head of the Lynn Canal. From these towns they crossed either the Chilkoot Pass or the White Pass into the Yukon Territory and proceeded thence to Lake Lindeman or Lake Bennett, the headwaters of the Yukon River. Here, some 25 to 35 grueling miles (40 - 56 km) from where they landed, prospectors built rafts and boats that would take them the final 500-plus miles (800-plus km) down the Yukon to Dawson City, near the gold fields. Stampeders had to carry a year's supply of goods — about a ton, more than half of it food — over the passes 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.

A hard life

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. (Photos)

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. (Photos).

Others took the Copper River Trail or the Teslin Trail by Stikine River and Teslin Lake, and some used the all-Canadian Ashcroft, aka the Cariboo Wagon Road 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, but use of this route was implicit in the discovery of gold finds at Nome and St. Michael near the Yukon estuary, and at Fairbanks, Alaska.

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 Charles Constantine and his more famous successor, 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, strictly policing the entry of weapons into the territory and requiring all those transiting the White Pass or Chilkoot Pass to be carrying sufficient goods (one ton) to survive. 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.

Also noteworthy is the first female member of the North West Mounted Police, Katherine Ryan, widely known as Klondike Kate. In addition to staking three claims in the Klondike area, she was also a gold inspector, entrepreneur and political activist — all very unusual activities for a woman to be involved in at the time. Her motto was "I wasn't built for going backwards. When I once step forward, I must go ahead." Another Yukon legend to claim the title of Klondike Kate was Kathleen Eloise Rockwell, a dancer-turned-gold rush entertainer in Dawson City. It is not clear which of the two women was the real "Kate."

Also in 1898 there was a call to women to join the Victorian Order of Nurses' Klondike contingent. Candidates had to be unmarried, at least twenty-eight years old, and be a graduate of a recognized nursing school. They were warned they would have to dress very plainly and not curl or crimp their hair. Four nurses were selected, three Canadians and one recent immigrant from England. They reached Dawson one month after the Sisters of St. Ann and found their skills desperately needed to care for the many victims of the typhoid epidemic that was raging through the Klondike. Women of the Klondike[1]

For a few short years, Skagway, Alaska (the main "Yukon Port") and Dawson City were on the world's "Grand Tour", an around-the-world circuit of the wealthy and those who entertained them; musicians and other artists of the stature of Anna Pavlova made the long journey to visit the city where the streets were almost literally paved with gold (claims staked on the gravel pits used to pave downtown Dawson have been found to have a higher percentage of gold in them than operating claims).

The Klondike field continues to be worked today, although most of the original deposits were removed in the early 1900s when small claim holdings were consolidated and were worked by large-scale industrial extraction methods, notably steam dredges.

Cultural legacy

Among the many to take part in the gold rush was writer Jack London, whose books White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and "To Build A Fire", a collection of short stories, were influenced by his northern experiences, and adventurer "Swiftwater" Bill Gates. Part I of Jack London's 1910 novel Burning Daylight is centered around the Klondike Gold Rush. Another literary luminary connected with the rush, and whose cabin still stands in Dawson City, was folk-lyricist Robert W. Service, whose short epics "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and other works describe the fierce grandeur of the north and the survival-ethic and gold fever of men and women in the frozen, gold-strewn north. Service's best-known line is the opening of "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which goes "There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold...".

One of the most thorough popular histories of the Klondike Gold Rush, titled simply Klondike, was written by Canada's Pierre Berton, himself raised in the Yukon Territory. (In the United States, Berton's book is entitled The Klondike Fever.) Berton covers nearly every misadventure of the nightmarish and harrowing journeys taken by the many parties on different routes bound for Dawson City, and also covers in fair detail the goings-on in that town up until about 1904.

Charlie Chaplin's movie The Gold Rush was set in the Klondike, as was Mae West's Diamond Lil.

The gold rush an important event in the history of the city of Edmonton, which until 2005 celebrated Klondike Days, an annual summer fair with a Klondike gold rush theme. During the rush Edmonton was believed to be a viable departure point for travel to the Klondike, and was heavily advertised as such by local merchants wanting to profit from people's ignorance, but only a handful made it from that embarkation point long after the rush was over, due to the immense distance and subarctic travel conditions. The tenuous, and arguably fraudulent, connection of Edmonton with the Klondike Gold Rush was a source of much ridicule for years; its origin being but an attempt in the 1960's to imitate the burgeoning success of the Calgary Stampede by finding an historic event the city was in some way involved in to function as a theme. This finally lead to the renaming of the city's annual summer exhibition in 2006 as Capital EX.

External links

Klondike: The Quest for Gold[2]

Documentary of a recreation of the trip to the Klondike

Victorian Order of Nurses Official Website [3]

Univ. Libraries, Univ. of Washington on Klondike Gold Rush
Map of the Chilkoot and White Passes
The Life of Jack London as Reflected in his Works
See Skagway: Gateway to the Klondike and Gold Fever! Seattle Outfits the Klondike Gold Rush for lessons about the Klondike Gold Rush from the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places.

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Eric A. Hegg Photographs 736 photographs from 1897-1901 documenting the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes, including depictions of frontier life in Skagway and Nome, Alaska and Dawson, Yukon Territory.
Henry M. Sarvant Photographs 212 photographs by Henry Mason Sarvant depicting his climbing expeditions to Mt. Rainier and scenes of the vicinity from 1892-1912. Also included are images of his trip to the Klondike gold fields in 1897 documenting his journey over the Chilkoot Pass and subsequent mining activities in the vicinity of Dawson, Yukon Territory.
Arthur Churchill Warner Photographs Images by the pioneer photographer A.C. Warner from the late 1800s and early 1900s of Seattle, and also of Alaska and the Yukon during the Gold Rush.
William E. Meed Photographs Photographs (ca. 1898-1907) of scenes in the Yukon Territory, Canada, and portions of Alaska and British Columbia during the Klondike gold rush.
Frank La Roche Photographs 312 photographs ca. 1888-1910 depicting scenes of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, Seattle, Washington state, Alaska, western United States, and Canada.
Alaska and Western Canada Collection Images documenting Alaska and Western Canada, primarily the provinces of Yukon Territory and British Columbia depicting scenes of the Gold Rush of 1898, city street scenes, Eskimo and Native Americans of the region, hunting and fishing, and transportation.