In those heady days of 1898-99, the Klondike kings had money - or gold - to burn. They were also starved for entertainment and they wanted the best. Saloon owners were prepared to oblige.
There were many Klondike entertainers, most…
Read more
Dawson City hit the big time in May of 1899. The isolated gold-rush mecca was on the North American map. But the news was not good. A massive city fire made the front pages of newspapers across the United States…
Read more
He was known by everyone as the saint of Dawson. When he died in 1899, after only two years in the bustling gold-rush town, his impact on the people of that gold-mad town was so great that everything came to…
Read more
The Klondike gold rush attracted a strange mix of personalities. Dawson City was the land for adventure seekers as much as it was for gold diggers. The Klondike had it all - from major prize fights to big-league gambling nights.…
Read more
When Mr. Ellis came to town, one thing was certain. Someone was going to die. Ellis, not his real name, was the name given to Canada's hangman. On December 10, 1962, Arthur Lucas and Robert Turpin felt the bite of…
Read more
Many schemes came to not much during the Klondike gold rush. Bunco artists, whose only goal was to fleece the hard-working miner, dreamed up many of them. One wacky scheme was the product of the United States government. It failed,…
Read more
Among the thousands of stampeders who tried to cash in on the Klondike Gold Rush was a professional gunfighter named Wyatt Earp. Yep! The same guy who carved his name in the American history books for his celebrated role in…
Read more
On January 3rd, 1959, Alaska officially became the 49th state in the Union. Like the continuing quest for Yukon autonomy, the road to Alaskan statehood had been long and winding. The United States bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867…
Read more
I’ve often thought that Whitehorse is such a proud name for the Yukon ’s capital city. The name has a ring about it and tells a story too. A story about the nearby Whitehorse rapids whose waters once churned and…
Read more
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.…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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,…
Read more
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…
Read more
