North to Alaska!

Eamonn Lynskey recalls the frenzy of the Klondike Gold Rush

Poet Robert Service was not a prospector. Born in 1874 in the UK, he was a seasoned traveller who found himself in Whitehorse in 1904, a town less than ten years old which had been a major staging point for prospectors en route to the Yukon and the Klondike gold fields.

‘There are strange things done in the midnight sun. By the men who moil for gold..:

I cannot remember when I first read Robert Service’s poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. It was sometime when I began to drift away from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories. That poem was just right for me at that time because it combined all the adventure and derring-do that young people are fond of.

And the subject! — The tragi-comical fate of Sam McGee’s remains, of course; but there was more in the poem for me than just that. It was my entry into the world of the Klondike Gold Rush and the tales of the fortunes made, and the fortunes not made, by the men and women who went prospecting for the precious metal in the far-off treacherous reaches of the Yukon Territory, many of them risking everything they had. Robert Service’s poetry was an introduction to an era of the nineteenth century American West that fascinated me then – and still does.

The poet himself was not a prospector. Born in 1874 in the UK, he was a seasoned traveller who found himself in Whitehorse in 1904, a town less than ten years old which had been a major staging point for prospectors en route to the Yukon and the Klondike gold fields. Here he met veterans of that time and listened to, and took notes of, their yarns. His work is a fascinating entry into the spirit of those times, and better than many abstract historical accounts.

And what times they were! In the early 1890s George Carmack and his Native-American brother-in-law Skookum Jim had been prospecting in the region for some time. Like many, they were making good gains, though nothing extraordinary. However, August 16, 1896 changed all that. In a small tributary of the Klondike River called Rabbit Creek, they made their big discovery. The creek was later renamed Bonanza Creek, and for the very good reason that it contained gold. In huge quantities.

Carmack lost no time in registering his claim next day to four strips of ground along the creek and the news of his discovery also lost no time in circulating among the other prospectors in the area. By the end of that month (a mere two weeks) every inch of Bonanza Creek had been claimed by other miners. Later, newer sources of gold came to be found further up the creek, with lodes far richer than even those found by George Carmack and Skookum Jim.

Because of the times that were in it, it took nearly another year before the news spread further. The full story of the discovery only emerged by the middle of 1897 when the first boats left the area carrying the newly discovered gold. When Tom Lippy and his wife Salome arrived back in San Francisco aboard the Excelsior in 1898 they brought with them gold valued, according to the Chicago Tribune, at "not less than $200,000” which is equivalent to over $7 million dollars today. Their Klondike neighbours Clarence and Ethel Berry also struck it rich, arriving back with a similar enormous fortune.

It had not been acquired easily. The Berrys had spent many months mining but with limited success until one evening Clarence heard a chance remark let slip by George Carmac in a local saloon about his gold strike on Bonanza Creek. Clarence immediately hurried to stake the claim that was to make him and his wife millionaires.

It was the arrival of these vast fortunes in San Francisco that got the ‘Klondike Stampede’ underway. In the words of the Johnny Horton ballad popular in the 1960s, it was ‘North to Alaska! We’re goin’ north, the rush is on!’ And in the relatively short period between summer 1897 to summer 1898 it is estimated that about 100,000 people set out for the Yukon and the Klondike goldfields situated just inside the Canadian border with Alaska.

It was possible to sail to the Klondike from Seattle via the Alaskan coast and then to proceed onwards up the Yukon River, but this way was very expensive. By far the most of the prospectors made the journey on foot up the dangerous and difficult trails from the Alaskan coast towns of Dyea and Skagway, determined to make their fortune.