Mother Lode of Lore Mined by Klondike Centennials

DAWSON, Yukon Territory — The mad rush started with one prospector giving another the shaft, forsaking a promise to pass the word if he found gold on a little stream bed in the middle of nowhere.

By the time the gold dust settled a couple of years later, tens of thousands who came north in the Klondike stampede had gotten the shaft, fleeced by con men, trampled by the elements or done in by their own greed.

A century ago, the world went Klondike crazy. Alaska and Yukon towns that sprang up during the Gold Rush--and survived its brief duration--have been marking a slew of centennials, from the arrival of the Canadian mounted police to the actual gold discovery to the stampede a year later.

The Gold Rush of 1897-98 was a maniacal dash toward the Yukon by wannabe prospectors with visions of nuggets waiting to be scooped up by anyone holding a shovel.

“I think it was the same sort of craziness you saw in the late 1940s, people buying Geiger counters and thinking they’d get rich finding uranium,” says David Neufeld, Yukon historian for Parks Canada.

The big strike came in August 1896, when George Carmack and Indian companions Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley found a thumb-size hunk of gold in a stream off the Klondike River that became known as Bonanza Creek.

The three were panning there on the advice of prospector Robert Henderson, who was working a nearby creek that turned out to be a bust.

Henderson asked Carmack to report back on the prospects along Bonanza Creek. Though Carmack spread the word to every other miner he encountered, he didn’t tell Henderson about Bonanza’s rich claims.

Historians speculate the snub resulted from racist comments Henderson made about Carmack’s Indian partners. Whatever the reason, by the time Henderson heard about the gold on Bonanza and an even richer branch called Eldorado Creek, the claims were all staked.

Henderson, the man some credit for touching off the Gold Rush, found himself shut out of the Klondike stampede.

Carmack and company grew rich overnight. Hundreds of others swarmed in from outposts along the Yukon River. Some of their 500-foot claims produced $1 million or more in gold within a few years.

The town of Dawson sprouted nearby and became the goal for 100,000 gold-seekers who set out for the territory. News of the gold strike trickled out, but it took a year and a dramatic voyage south by the first Klondike tycoons to set the stampede in motion.

The steamship Excelsior pulled into San Francisco on July 15, 1897, with about 20 prospectors who shambled down the dock in ratty mining clothes, lugging suitcases filled with gold.

Two days later, a second vessel carrying Klondike gold headed into Seattle. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer heralded its coming with the headline, “Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 68 rich men on the Steamer Portland. Stacks of yellow metal!”

Thousands mobbed the wharf to catch a glimpse of the gold and its rumpled owners.

“Imagine the scene,” says Canadian historian Pierre Berton, whose book, “Klondike,” is considered the definitive account of the Gold Rush. “Here are these men still stained with the mud of Eldorado and Bonanza creeks, and they’re all rich, carrying sacks of gold. This got people out and turned them crazy.”

Policemen, bartenders, doctors and lawyers, store clerks--even Seattle’s mayor--quit their jobs and converged on the Yukon in an 1890s version of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

People built snow bicycles, boat-sleds and other ridiculous contraptions to reach the Klondike. Some talked of flying hot-air balloons to the gold fields.

Newspapers fed the frenzy, competing with one another for the most sensational--sometimes fictional--stories of the Yukon’s easy pickings.

“The Gold Rush was one big O.J. trial,” says Dave McClelland, a tour operator in the Gold Rush town of Skagway. “The coverage was so sensational, it got people all churned up. Then people got here and saw it wasn’t so easy.”

The country had been mired in a depression, and the sudden optimism of the Gold Rush jump-started the economy.

“Part of what caused the depression was a mental attitude. If you expect a disaster, you’ll probably get one,” says Irene Henricksen of Skagway, whose grandfather joined the Gold Rush to work on a Yukon railroad. “The Klondike brought hope. People saw riches to be had if you could just get there.”

In Alaska, many stampeders holed up for winter along the lower Yukon or in the boom towns of Skagway and Dyea, the gateways to mountain passes to the river.

Skagway became known as a “hell on earth” for its lawlessness, gunfire and den of thieves and swindlers led by the infamous Soapy Smith. His gang preyed on “cheechakos,” newcomers who wouldn’t know the difference between gold dust and dandruff.

Until he died in a shootout in 1898, Smith sent many stampeders home penniless without ever getting nearer than 600 miles of the Klondike.

Most of the 30,000 gold-seekers who made it to Dawson started at the Chilkoot Trail, a 33-mile trek over a steep mountain pass leading to the Yukon’s headwaters. Charlie Chaplin re-created their single-file ascent up a staircase carved in snow in his silent film, “The Gold Rush.”

Enchanted by Hollywood movies about the Klondike and the tales of Jack London and poems of Robert Service, visitors today wax romantic about the Gold Rush. For stampeders, though, the journey was a nightmare.

About 60 died in an avalanche along the Chilkoot Trail, while others drowned or froze. Some developed scurvy or lost limbs from frostbite. Many lived for months on beans and sourdough bread, or less.

The scene in “The Gold Rush” when Chaplin cooks his footwear for dinner was drawn from the story of a bishop who supposedly boiled his boots to drink the broth and eat the shoe leather.

After their hellish winter, those still bent on the Klondike reached Dawson in the summer of 1898 to find the gold claims already staked. They milled about the muddy streets listlessly, ogling the dance-hall girls and following the rich prospectors who strutted around town in splendor.

Many of the Klondike’s nouveau riches didn’t stay that way long, squandering fortunes on wine and women or bankrupting themselves in bad business schemes.

Gamblers, showgirls and shrewd merchants--those who parted the prospectors from their gold pokes--were the ones who found the real Klondike mother lode.

“The people who made money weren’t the ones who found a gold mine,” says Berton, whose father came to the Yukon in the Gold Rush. “They found a man who found a gold mine.”

Most latecomers quickly went home without ever seeing the gold fields, though some stayed on to work or start businesses. John Firth of Whitehorse, the Yukon capital, says his grandfather opened an insurance office in Dawson after failing to strike gold.

“He was a man of letters, and a lot of the miners were illiterate,” Firth says. “His ability to read and write were worth more money to him than digging in the dirt.”

As quickly as it started, the Gold Rush faded. National interest turned to the Spanish-American War, and the Klondike was forgotten.

Some towns such as Dyea vanished, but Skagway and Dawson lived on and thrive today as popular tourist stops. Gold still comes out of the Klondike as miners rework the old claims with modern machinery.

After the Gold Rush, professional prospectors moved on to new strikes around Fairbanks and Nome, Alaska. But even those who went home broke felt somehow enriched by the Klondike. In the end, the stampede wasn’t about gold at all, Berton says, but about testing one’s mettle.

“If you read their diaries, very few people who participated were disappointed,” says Clay Alderson, superintendent of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Seattle.

“Most said, ‘We didn’t get rich, but I’m glad we went and made it there and got to be part of this.’ ”