History glitters in the Yukon
Gold rush still draws a big crowd to Klondike
Two years was all it lasted, but the Klondike Gold Rush indelibly shaped the culture, identity and even landscape of northern Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Like all great historical events, the gold rush has its well-told story: the oral tradition of the region’s Tagish First Nations people tells how while fishing in the Yukon River, Dawson Charlie, Skookum Jim and his brother-inlaw George Carmack were approached by veteran gold-seeker Robert Henderson.
He told Carmack about some prospects he’d found in the Klondike River Valley, so a couple of weeks later the men poled their boat up Rabbit Creek, a Klondike tributary. After panning a few encouraging nuggets, one of them picked up a dime-sized chunk of gold. Overturning loose bits of rock, they found gold sandwiched thick between rock slabs. The next day, August 17, Carmack, Jim and Charlie staked their claim on the renamed Bonanza Creek.
Even in those pre-twitter days, word spread fast, drawing prospectors from all over the Yukon and Alaska. Days later gold was found on Eldorado Creek, a tributary of the Bonanza. But it wasn’t until the following July that news went viral, when the steamship Excelsior landed in San Francisco laden with more than half a million dollars worth of Klondike gold. Three days later, a crowd of 5,000 greeted another steamer with 68 miners aboard in Portland, Ore., to witness more than $1 million in gold carried down the gangplank in a battered assortment of suitcases and rope-tied bags.
The Klondike Gold Rush had officially begun.
Spurred by the hardship of a global recession, 50,000 people descended on the Yukon. By 1898 the population had exploded from 5,000 to more than 30,000. Ground zero was Dawson City, a trading post on a mud flat at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers. While steamers did navigate the Inside Passage to the Alaska Coast and up the Yukon River to Dawson City, such travel was expensive. Most stampeders booked passage to Skagway and from there hiked overland via the Chilkoot or White Pass trails. From their layover at Lake Lindeman and Bennett Lake, those who survived spent the dark winter months building boats for the 800-km voyage to Dawson City. In May 1898, a motley flotilla of barges, rafts and plank boats headed up the Yukon River.
Their arrival was bittersweet, however, as the hopeful stampeders learned the stakes had been scooped up two years earlier. While many turned right around, others pursued their fortunes selling supplies and services to the miners; Dawson’s shops boasted the finest in French Champagnes, oysters, Parisian fashions and porcelain.
While the Klondike Gold Rush officially ended with a gold discovery in Alaska in 1899, ironically 1900 marked its most productive year with more than $22 million worth of gold pulled from the creeks. Today, Dawson’s heritage is lovingly preserved in its architecture, right down to the wooden sidewalks. The gold search continues, with about 13,000 active placer claims currently operating in the Yukon.
The stories live on, too, in the writings of Pierre Berton and Robert Service, on Discovery Channel’s popular Gold Rush TV series and around kitchen tables the world over.
“The stories are still being spread around,” says Merran Smith with the Klondike Visitors’ Association (dawsoncity. ca). “People came from Europe, the U.S., from across Canada, from Edmonton up the Mackenzie River and from B.C. on the Stikine. Their stories have been passed down to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The Klondike is a living, breathing history.”