Klondike rush

chained_bear commented on the word Klondike rush

"In the summer of 1896, prospectors had found gold in a creek near the Klondike River, just east of the Alaskan border in Canada's Yukon Territory: the Klondike was a rich find, and newspapers and magazines ran sensational stories.... Invariably, they failed to list the perils of northern travel. Of the more than 100,000 men and women who set off from all over the world on the months-long trek, fewer than 30,000 would reach Dawson City, the boomtown that served as gateway.... Fewer still would strike it rich. Good fortune smiled more often on those with the patience or entrepreneurial skills to open up a general store or saloon.

"But gold mining was a powerful addiction. ... Years of unchecked speculation on Wall Street and faulty federal policies ... had finally come to a head in 1893. Nearly fifteen thousand companies and more than six hundred banks failed, and 20 percent of the American workforce lost their jobs. Thousands of people had no savings to buy food or pay the rent. The effects of the panic were felt around the world. Thus... prospectors kept coming to the Klondike. Then, in the winter of 1898, word traveled to the region that gold had been discovered on a creek on the Seward Peninsula, clear across Alaska, a distance of about 800 miles as the raven flies. Thousands ... decided to abandon their barren claims and, with picks and shovels in hand, make their way to the next shining prospect. The only route from the Klondike to Nome is along the mighty Yukon River, which stretches 2,300 miles from its headwaters in Canada across Alaska to its mouth in the Bering Sea. But by then, the Yukon River had already frozen over. The prospectors, willing by now to take just about any risk, ignored the freeze and set out by any means they could find, by dogsled or horseback, on foot, and even a few on bicycles or ice skates. The pilgrimage... was weeks long and the line stretched out for miles. ... Several hundred miners arrived in Nome in the winter of 1898. How many didn't make it or turned back will never be known. ... those who did arrive were mostly tough and experienced trail veterans and prospectors, who were hardened by at least one far northern winter. They were known as "sourdoughs" because they often kept a supply of yeast in crocks held close to their chests. This was used to make bread on the trail and it ensured that the miner would never go hungry."

--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 12-13

January 24, 2017