Sunday, May 30, 2010

The world was in an economic chaos, the depression of 1893 had just ended; and 3 guys found gold on August 16, 1896 near Rabbit Creek. It was renamed Bonanza and was where the Yukon and Klondike Rivers met. They were George, his brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, and Dawson Charlie. When they filed their claims the next day in the town of For 50 miles away, the word was out and spread everywhere. On August 18, 1896 the newspapers printed headlines that the gold was literally laying on the ground waiting to be picked up. In reality, it was much, much harder to find. This Klondike Gold Rush only lasted 2 years and many men gave their lives to find this gold.
The gold was found near Dawson City, Yukon in Canada. The Canadian government required the stampeders carry 2000# of supplies that were needed just for survival because this area had cold and brutal winters with temperatures from -6 to -15 degrees. There were only 4 ways to get to Dawson City: 1. to take a boat up the Yukon River from St. Michaels, Alaska to Dawson City, 2. take a ferry up the Lynn Canal to Skagway,, then hike up the White Pass Trail to Dawson City, or 3. take a ferry up the Lynn Canal to Dyea,, then hike up the steep 33 mile Chilkoot Trail to get to Dawson City, or 4. hike an all-land route from Edmonton.
The towns of Dawson City, Skagway and Dyea only grew because of the gold rush. Captain William Moore came with the Army Corps of Engineers in 1887 to survey the area around present day Skagway and Dyea before the gold was discovered. He bought 160 acres here because he felt it would eventually become a town and named Moorestown. When the spelling stampeders arrived on steamers, Moore felt he would become rich, but they pitched tents all over Moore's land and refused to pay him. In addition, another man set himself up as a surveyor and planned out all of the streets in the very beginning to become rich. The town of Skagway had grown to 8000 to 10,000 people when before it was just Moore and his son.
The route up the Yukon River from St. Michael's, Alaska was so expensive that only the very rich could afford it. About 2000 tried the very difficult all land route from Edmonton with only a handful making it, but it took 2 years and by then the gold rush was over.
Those miners that came up the Lynn Canal had to decide which town they would leave from: "Dyea or Skagway.. The steep 33 mile Chilkoot Trail out of Dyea was one of the few ice free passes the Tlingit Indians used for centuries to trade with the interior Indians. The Tlingit word Dyea means "to pack". The Tlingit Indians caught Euchalon fish (very oily fish), squeezed the oil for frying or dried the fish to make candles, caught mussels, picked seaweed and cranberries and packed them to trade for furs, bear and moose meat. Dyea's port on the Taiya River Inlet Estuary was shallow; the miners had to unload the big steamers onto smaller boats to reach the 2 mile wharf to town; and then pack the supplies to climb the trail. The trail was very steep but the shortest. Over 30,000 miners climbed up 1500 ice carved steps(gaining 1000 vertical feet in only one-quarter of a mile) called the Golden Stairs of Canada 20 to 40 times shuttling their supplies over the pass.
Skagway had a better port than Dyea; therefore it was called the "Gateway to the Klondike". The miners could pack their supplies right off of the steamer and start climbing the White Pass up the mountain. The White Pass was not as steep and 600 feet lower than the Chilkoot Trail, but it was 10 miles longer. Because Skagway was so wild, some miners preferred to live in Dyea. Eventually the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was built to transport the miners, supplies to the Yukon, the hard times still were not over. Dawson City was considered the "Paris of the North", a very expensive town in which to live. Anything could be bought-for a price! A fresh egg could cost $5.00, an onion- $2.00 and a gallon of whiskey- $40.00. The town has all of the modern conveniences- electricity, running water and telephones. The houses stately and the government buildings were grand. If you were a poor miner, it was hard to find an affordable boarding house.
The gold fields were outside of Dawson City and many of the land had already been claimed. Just to find a spot the miners had to get through the permafrost layer, which is a layer of permanently frozen soil. This frozen muck needed to be thawed by digging a shaft deep down and building fires to warm the muck. To build these fires they had to chop the wood. They used 30 cords of firewood in just 1 winter. The gold is below this layer along with the beige gravel called "pay gravel". Then they needed to tunnel out the bedrock, called "drifting" all along the gold-bearing gravels of the old streams. When they found something promising, they had to haul all of it up to the top in huge buckets and place it in a pile. When the sun showed itself more and the weather warmed up enough for the streams to flow again, they washed this pile in the stream, called "sluicing", Once the gravel and dirt washed away they could see if they had found any gold. One journalist watching this said this gold mining in the Klondike was not for a poor man.
Skagway's original name was Valley Skagua from the Tlingit Indians; then Captain Moore tried to name it Moorestown. It was an extremely wild west town with gunshots in the street every night. The town was controlled by a Jefferson Randolph Smith called "Soapy" who owned a saloon and ran criminal scams with his network of 300 gangsters. He even had the sheriff in his pocket. Outwardly, he seemed to be a great civic minded man who pumped lots of money into the town; but the money he gave the town he had gotten illegally with his talent of manipulating people . The town realized what was going on and set up a committee of vigilantes with Frank Reid, the original surveyor of the town; and gave him an ultimatum to return the money his gangsters had stolen from a miner, John Stewart. Soapy refused and there was a shoot out between Soapy and Frank Reid. Soapy died immediately, but Reid held on in agony for 12 more days before he died. Both are buried just above the town in the Gold Rush Cemetery.
The town of Skagway does not have 10,000 inhabitants now. The 13,191 acres of Skagway are federal, state, city and private lands. The main section of town has been restored by the National Park Service. They cater to the cruise ships with almost one-thirds of their stores being diamond shops. Out of 15 old buildings left from the gold rush days, they have restored 14 of them. The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad is running again taking tourists up the White Pass to Whitehorse. The steep mountain passes can be appreciated in comfort. The White Pass Trail has disappeared and hiking should not be attempted here.
In the old town of Dyea the wooden buildings have been dismantled and the town left for nature to take it over again. The land is now 8 feet higher than it was in 1898, so the 2 mile wharf that was above shallow tidal flats is now above an all treeless meadow. All that is left of the wharf are the pilings and an old decomposing rowboat that was stored in the shrubs. In the woods that are taking over Dyea there is a false front of a realtor's building and a row of the decomposing tree roots that were the tree lined streets, and pieces of the things the miners threw away to lighten their pack loads. Of the Vinings and Wilkes Wharehouse all that is left are a few decomposing pilings because the building was set up on pilings because high tide reached this area. All of the trees we can see now that are very tall were not even growing when the gold rush was here. This is now a haven for all of the indigenous animals of the area.