Home : Boom Towns :The Klondike
Cries of "Gold! Gold! Gold!" sent over 100,000 optimistic "stampeders" rushing to Dawson City and the Klondike gold fields in 1897 and 1898. They believed riches lay waiting for those who could reach this remote Canadian region. For most, this journey was the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of the gold rush. Stampeders were physically unprepared and poorly equipped for the severe northern climate and terrain. Some died and many abandoned the journey. About 40,000 people reached the Klondike, only four of every ten who tried. DawsonThe first major Klondike gold discovery occurred on August 16, 1896. Local miners soon staked claims and established the town of Dawson. Official word of the strike did not reach the outside for nearly a year because the Yukon River froze in late September and prevented communication. In two years it became the largest city in Canada west of Winnipeg with a population that fluctuated between 30,000 and 40,000 people. It happened fast, and the pace never let up as wave after wave of gold-seekers arrived. With them came the characters who transformed Dawson from a mining camp into one of the most bizarre cities in all of North America.
Dawson's reputation as a booming, bawdy frontier town was largely the result of over-zealous writers. The rush was a phenomenon that they all hyped and exploited to sell their newspapers, guide books and magazines as gold fever swept the continent and abroad. Dawson had plenty of dance halls, saloons and brothels, some dance-hall girls wore $1,500 gowns imported from Paris. It had tons of gold, vats of whisky, and it had gamblers and 'scarlet women' caught up in a riotous swirl of social activity with an international cast. More fortunes were won and lost in the gambling halls of Dawson than in the gold fields. The reality is that the period of chaos lasted only for a few months in 1898. Dawson could have been a wide-open town where 'anything goes', but it also had the North-West Mounted Police. Constables of the North-West Mounted Police earned $1.25 a day. They worked long and hard to maintain law and order through the rush. Dance-hall girls and prostitutes also worked long and hard, and they earned ten times more money. The North-West Mounted Police instilled law and order, which confounded many Americans. They expected the anarchy of American mining camps, and were shocked to learn that handguns were illegal in Dawson. Others openly resented having to behave themselves and obey Canadian laws. Most stampeders felt disappointed when they reached Dawson in 1898. Local miners had claimed all the gold-bearing creeks up to a year earlier. Without gold "for the taking," late arrivals milled about town. Many went home. Some found jobs in and around Dawson. People made good wages working another miner's claim, or in saloons, hotels, and other support positions. Others looked for gold on nearby creeks but rarely found any. The irony of the gold rush was that after risking their lives and fortunes on the journey, most stampeders never struck it rich. A major gold discovery was made in Nome, Alaska, and an exodus began. News had filtered into Dawson during the winter of 1898, prompting hundreds of gold-seekers to head out along the frozen river. Many more waited until the opening of navigation, and the first steamboats of 1899 left Dawson crammed full of passengers. As the Klondike gold rush subsided, the drain continued throughout the following two decades. NomeGold discoveries in the Nome area had been reported as far back as 1865 by Western Union surveyors seeking a route across Alaska and the Bering Sea. But it was a $1500-to-the-pan gold strike on tiny Anvil Creek in 1898 by three Scandinavians, Jafet Lindeberg, Erik Lindblom, and John Brynteson, that brought thousands of miners to the "Eldorado." Almost overnight an isolated stretch of tundra fronting the beach was transformed into a tent-and-log cabin city of 20,000 prospectors, gamblers, claim jumpers, saloon keepers, and prostitutes. The gold-bearing creeks had been almost completely staked, when some entrepreneur discovered the "golden sands of Nome." With nothing more than shovels, buckets, rockers and wheel barrows, thousands of idle miners descended upon the beaches. Two months later the golden sands had yielded one million dollars in gold (at $16 an ounce). A narrow-gauge railroad and telephone line from Nome to Anvil Creek was built in 1900. By 1902 the more easily reached claims were exhausted and large mining companies with better equipment took over the mining operations. Since the first strike on tiny Anvil Creek, Nome's gold fields have yielded $136 million. In Nome, the worst criminals were on the other side of the legal fence, with the most nefarious crimes being committed by Judge Arthur E. Noyes and his accomplice Alexander McKenzie, an influential Washington politician. Disputed claims were brought before Judge Noyes who left the disputes unresolved while placing the claims in the receivership of McKenzie who operated and milked them in the name of the Alaska Gold Mining Company, formed in Washington for the express purpose of bilking the Nome miners. When a San Francisco Appeals Court judge ordered them to desist, Noyes and McKenzie refused and had to be arrested, along with their court clerk, by two U.S. marshals. Because of their political influence, neither man served time and only the court clerk wound up behind bars. Skagway and DyeaLocated 600 miles south of the gold fields, they were the closest salt water ports to the Klondike. They soon became "boom towns" that catered to miners. The most popular routes to the Klondike began here: from Skagway, stampeders took the White Pass and from Dyea they took the Chilkoot Pass. Conditions on the White Pass trail were dreadful. The route was narrow, steep, slick and overcrowded. Nearly 3,000 pack animals died. Drivers rushing over the pass had little concern for beasts. Exhausted horses starved, were hurt on rough ground, became mired in mud and fell over cliffs. Novelist Jack London, a witness, renamed White Pass the "Dead Horse Trail." The twenty-six mile trail over Chilkoot Pass was steep and hazardous. Most stampeders who gave up did so attempting to cross the mountains. The lure of gold brought more than honest miners and foolish adventurers to the North. It also brought con men, thieves and opportunists who got rich by preying on gullible miners. Notorious among them was Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, whose gang of over 100 ruffians ruled Skagway in 1897 and 1898. He ran crooked gambling halls, freight companies that hauled nothing, telegraph offices that had no telegraph link, even an "army enlistment" tent where the victim's clothes and possessions were stolen while a "doctor" gave him a physical. His men met newcomers at the docks posing as clergymen, newspaper reporters, knowledgeable old-timers and freight company representatives. After sizing up a fellow with a fat wallet, they would direct him to one of Soapy's bogus businesses or mark him for a later robbery. Soapy met his end when he and his thugs fleeced a miner of $2,800 in gold. The miner, instead of slinking away beaten, fired up the citizens of Skagway who formed a vigilante committee headed by Frank Reid, a civil engineer. Reid stood up to Soapy and shot him in the heart, but was fatally wounded in the shootout.
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