A few men made millions in the early days of the Klondike gold rush. Thousands, it is said, left the Klondike with nothing but memories.
This story is about a poor immigrant named John, who was born in Sweden in…
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When I knew him back in the 1960s, he was a soft-spoken elderly gentleman who usually occupied a special place at Cal Miller's Capitol Hotel bar. Back then, that's where anyone who was anyone in the mining industry gathered.…
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To most of us, the Klondike gold rush is a multi-image photograph of grizzled men climbing the steep snow covered slopes of the Chilkoot Pass, of unshaven men mired in the muck digging for gold, of poorly clad men roaming…
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Clifford Sifton was a lawyer from Brandon, Manitoba who was first elected to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1896. Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier quickly appointed him Minister of the Interior and Secretary of Indian Affairs. Back then,…
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"The All-Canadian Route to the Klondike!" The headlines trumpeted the news. "Edmonton to the Klondike and return in six months." Those headlines struck a chord with Albertans mired in the depression at the turn of the century. Edmonton was not…
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In Dawson City itself, the first crude post office was operated by the Northwest Mounted Police from a tent on Front Street. Then, in 1897, Frank Harper was appointed the first post master; but the Mounties still staffed the office.…
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He captured the Klondike. Almost single handedly. And because he did, the images of the great Klondike Gold Rush are as fresh today as they were in 1898.
Eric Hegg was a studio photographer in Bellingham, Washington when news of…
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At the height of the Klondike gold rush in 1898, Dawson City was rightly called the Paris of the North. The boom towns had just about everything you could imagine. And it had characters...some of whom were already rich and…
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The first newspaper to hit the streets in Dawson City was the Klondike Nugget. Actually, the first edition didn't hit the streets at all. Instead it was nailed to a telephone pole.
Gene Allen was the fiesty editor of the…
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Frank Watson was among about 1500 people who attempted to reach the Klondike via the almost impossible route from Edmonton. When he arrived in the Upper Liard River area in the spring of 1898 Watson had lost all hope of…
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