The Trump riddle

DID HIS GRANDFATHER — OR ANOTHER FRED TRUMPF — FLIP KLONDIKE CLAIMS?

IMAURA FORREST t was the summer of 1897, and word was beginning to filter south that there was gold up in the Klondike. Fred Trumpf got his foot in the door early. By the time the first prospectors landed in Seattle carrying the gold that launched the stampede, he’d already applied for a mining claim near Dawson City, in today’s Yukon Territory. His signature, “Fred Trumpf,” is still clearly visible on the original application, 120 years later.

By the looks of things, Trumpf wasn’t all that interested in digging for gold. On July 8, he split up his claim, which had cost him $15, and sold one half for $400. A few months later, he sold the other half for $2,000, equal to more than $50,000 today.

That September, he did it again: applied for a claim, split it up and sold for a tidy profit. There’s no evidence he ever did any work on either claim.

It’s widely known that Donald Trump’s grandfather — born Friedrich in Germany in 1869 — got his start by opening a gold rush hotel in the Yukon in 1898 and “mining the miners,” as Trump biographer Gwenda Blair put it.

Blair knew about the gold mining claims, too, and they earn a passing reference in her 2000 biography, The Trumps.

When Catherine Spude first saw the old records, still filed in the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse, they seemed to fit. It made sense, in a way, that Donald Trump’s grandfather would have taken a shine to flipping claims in the Klondike.

“The way a lot of people made money in the Klondike was not in digging gold out of the ground, it was in exchanging property,” said Spude, a historical archeologist and author of four books about the Klondike.

“It’s the kind of speculation that Donald Trump is doing today as a real estate owner.”

It’s a good story, that Donald Trump’s grandfather was flipping property back in 1897. Trouble is, it might not be the Trumps’ story at all.

Last month, Spude decided to search for records of a Fred Trumpf in Alaska or the Yukon, instead of Trump, as he was generally known.

Against all odds, she found a second Fred Trump — or Trumpf, that is. In 1910, an unmarried gold prospector named Fred Trumpf was recorded living near Juneau, Alaska. He was 10 years older than Donald and maybe added that ‘f’ to his name by mistake. In fact, she’s willing to bet on it.

“A million dollars, no. But $50, OK.”

Wayne Potoroka, mayor of Dawson City, is a betting man, too. Back in February, when Potoroka first saw the old grant application with Trumpf’s signature, he took to Facebook to write about it.

“Here’s a neat link and evidence that … all roads lead through the Klondike,” he wrote. “Full marks to anyone who recognizes the gentleman whose name appears at the top of this application.”

It was a small claim to fame, but there it was. Fred Trump had a hotel in Whitehorse, sure, but most people didn’t think he’d ever gone up to Dawson. an Alaska island after 40 days, barring five who’d died of exposure.

“There could be no Donald Trump today if he hadn’t gotten rescued from that island,” Spude mused.

By the summer of 1898, Trump had opened the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel in Bennett, along the gold rush route to the Klondike. When a new railroad rendered Bennett obsolete, he floated his hotel downriver and set up shop in Whitehorse.

With some relish, reporters have noted that more was on offer at the Arctic than supper and a warm bed.

A letter in a local paper at the time warned “respectable women” to stay away, “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex.”

But by 1901, Trump saw the writing on the wall and left the Yukon as the gold rush was ending, taking his fortune with him.

“He was a guy who left the table while he was ahead,” Blair said. “He was good at getting in and getting out.”

We’ll likely never know all the details of Fred Trump’s early years in the Yukon. And we’ll probably never know much at all about the elusive Fred Trumpf of Alaska.

But Yukon historian Michael Gates has some useful perspective to offer on the story of Donald Trump’s grandfather.

“The only reason anybody’s interested in it at all is because his grandson is very prominent,” he said.

“As far as I can tell, he was just one of a cast of thousands.

“There was nothing particularly outstanding about him. Nothing extraordinary.”