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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August 16th, 1896 was a sunny Sunday. Too hot in fact for the three men who trudged through the bush down the valley of a small stream that flowed into the Klondike River.
A white man, George Carmack, his…
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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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These days a lot of outdoor enthusiasts head to the nearest sports centre and order a Bayliner or a Chriscraft boat. Then comes the summer of fun on the many Yukon lakes and rivers. But when the first gold seekers…
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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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It wasn't fun. Gold rushes never are, but the Klondike stampede was worse than most. There were countless dangers along the trail. An avalanche on the Chilkoot in the spring of 1898 killed sixty-three people.
The previous September, heavy…
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When George Carmack and Skookum Jim discovered coarse gold on Bonanza Creek in 1896, every prospector in the district headed for the Klondike creeks. By the summer of 1897, poor prospectors had become wealthy Klondike kings, and they wanted…
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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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Railways have a way of making - or breaking - a community. Such was the case for the boom and bust town of Dyea, near Skagway. This summer, I stood at headwaters of the Taiya Inlet where Dyea once stood…
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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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In his days, he was the toughest man in the British Empire. He'd beaten everyone he'd met in the ring. But he never had the chance to fight the best in North America. So when he came to the Klondike,…
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Are we there yet? The Klondike gold seekers who left the west coast and sailed the inside passage to Alaska could be forgiven for uttering that famous childhood phase. The journey to the goldfields began with a scenic boat ride…
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He was a big, bold and brash farmboy from eastern Ontario. When he joined the Klondike stampede in 1897, his youthful vigor and incredible strength got him into and out of a lot of trouble. In later years, so did…
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