Alaska Coach Tour: The Klondike Gold Rush and Panning for Gold

Welcome back to Skagway, Alaska, the Gateway to the Gold Rush of 1897-1898! In today’s post, I’m going to take you on a tour of our gold fields. But if you didn’t read my last post about how Skagway came to be, check it out here: Skagway, Alaska; Where Every Day is 1898 in Southeast Alaska.

Gold Fever

In the summer of 1896, gold was discovered on Rabbit Creek, which flows into the Klondike River, which flows into the Yukon River near Dawson City, Yukon. All of this happened 600 miles north of Skagway, Alaska. But in July of 1897 when news of the gold strike arrived in the Lower 48, hopeful “Stampeders” stampeded onto steamships heading up the Inside Passage to the newly booming tent-city of Skagway, Alaska. From here, the “Klondikers”, as they were also called, prepared to walk north.

Imagine the chaotic scene along the muddy streets of Skagway: men shouting and haggling while stockpiling their supplies, dogs barking, horses neighing under their bulk and burden, newspapermen weaving through the crowd taking photographs and using anyone’s speculations as their own to sell papers back home, women calling from balconies negotiating their affections, celebrants stumbling out of the saloons and down the wooden sidewalks, and proud Native Tlingit (pronounced Kling-kit) men offering their strong backs to haul supplies up the mountains for a substantial fee.

2,000 Pounds of Supplies

The Klondike was 600 miles north of Skagway and there was a mighty large range of Coast Mountains to get through first. Fall and winter were coming on, and everybody was uneasy about the journey, including the Canadian Mounted Police. They worried for the safety of those amateur prospectors in the rugged and cold north mountains. So, they mandated that each person who was crossing into Canada carried 2,000 pounds worth of goods and supplies in order to survive a year in the remote Yukon. Here’s a partial list of what was recommended to carry to the Klondike region in 1897:

Can you imagine? We live in the world of protein bars and ultra-light fabrics, and these determined prospectors- men, women and children- all agreed to carry the heft of these items up and over snowy mountains hoping to make it rich in the gold fields of the north.

The next big decision was how to actually get over the mountains to the Klondike and that weighed heavily on their minds, too. From Skagway, there were basically two routes: The Chilkoot Trail, or the White Pass Trail.

Chilkoot Trail

At 32 miles long, this option was the shortest and most direct path. It was tried and true as this trail had been used for centuries as a prominent trading trail between the Tlingit Native Americans along the Alaskan Coast and the Tagish First Nation People of interior Yukon. But it was really, really steep; the last two miles gained 1000′ of elevation on the famous Golden Staircase, a set of icy steps up an avalanche shoot. And to take this trail, the prospectors had to carry all their supplies on their back, shuttling 20 or 30 times up and over the pass. A grueling choice indeed.

Scenes along the infamous Chilkoot Trail which left from Dyea, a village just west of Skagway.

The White Pass Trail

The other choice to get over the mountains from Skagway was the longer and lower elevation White Pass Trail. The man who plotted out this option, William Moore, bragged that it was wide and easy for stock horses or mules to carry all the necessary supplies in less trips. Unfortunately, as the “Klondikers” found out, the trail was narrow, sometimes steep and slick. As the overburdened animals stumbled through knee-deep mud and jagged rocks, many of them broke their legs and had to be pushed over the cliffs. Others completely collapsed and died along the way from exhaustion.

There are brutal accounts of malnourishment and maltreatment of the animals and it is estimated that during that winter, the carcasses of over 3,000 horses lay along the route. It didn’t take long for a young man to come along by the name of Jack London who later wrote some stories and penned the real name for this trail as the “Dead Horse Trail”.

“The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps. They died at the rocks, they were poisoned at the summit, and they were starved at the lakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, and they went through it; in the river they drowned under their loads or were smashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped their legs in the crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with their packs; in the sloughs they sank from fright or smothered in the slime; and they were disemboweled in the bogs where the corduroy logs turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them to death and when they were gone, went back to the beach and bought more. Some did not bother to shoot them, stripping the saddles off and the shoes and leaving them where they fell. Their hearts turned to stone- those which did not break- and they became the beasts, the men on the Dead Horse Trail.” -Jack London, Journalist. The God of His Fathers, Doubleday Page & Co., New York, 1914, p. 70-80

Scenes along the White Pass, or “Dead Horse” Trail

“I must admit that I was as brutal as the rest but we were all mad-mad for gold, and we did things that we live to regret.” -Jack Newman, packer on the White Pass Trail, ca.1897

There were no good choices indeed. Whichever trail they took, the prospectors would say they wished they had taken the other, for one was “Hell” and the other “Damnation”!

Down to Dawson City

Once the Klondikers reached the other side of the mountains, they made their way to Bennett City on the shores of Bennett Lake. Since the lake was solidly frozen when they arrived, they used their time to chop down trees and build their boats waiting for the chance to carry on. The winter conditions were unimaginable that year in their tent city as records reported temperatures of -40 to -60 degrees below zero.

On the first day of Spring in 1898, Bennett Lake was clear of ice and over 1000 boats took off from the shores. Bystanders watched as 100 boats immediately sank. After carrying their supplies all that way over the mountains from Skagway, watching their goods disappear in the depths must have been incredibly disheartening. Those that made it across the lake, and the next, entered the Class V rapids of the Yukon River around Whitehorse, Yukon. The Canadian Mounted Police took to painting numbers on the boats to register who would make it, and who would drown, in the rapids.

Four more weeks of paddling down the Yukon River finally brought the Klondikers to Dawson City, Yukon which was the closest city to Rabbit Creek where gold had originally been discovered TWO YEARS EARLIER! Our hopeful prospectors who had made that long arduous journey had no way of knowing that they were two years too late. The claims had all been staked, the rivers tapped out, and almost all the gold was gone.

It is estimated that 100,000 people came through Skagway in 1897-1898 and only 20,000 people actually made it to Dawson City, Yukon. And of those, only one percent actually made any money at all.

The trip had been grueling and many turned back for lack of money or gumption. Many others died in avalanches, drowning and violence along the route. Up to 36% of the prospectors died of diseases as there were massive outbreaks of typhoid fever, meningitis, measles and STDs. And even though many never found more than a few gold flakes in the process, it is well documented that they all agreed that the journey was the greatest adventure of their lifetime.

The Klondike Gold Rush is an incredible American story of hope, courage and determination. It is also considered one of the last great adventure stories of the American and Canadian frontier. What an adventure indeed!

More of the Story

If you’d like to learn more about the Klondike Gold Rush, there are infinite resources online, on Youtube and many books written on the subject. The short stories of Jack London and the poetry of Robert Service absolutely bring the scenes to life. Many other people who dabbled as miners, entrepreneurs, store keepers, entertainers and ladies of the night became famous in their own right and their stories can be widely found. Even John Nordstrom made the trip to the Klondike. He ended up selling off his share of a claim, and with $13,000 came back to Seattle to start a famous store called Nordstroms.

The Klondike Gold Rush is our history, and everyday I get to tell this amazing story to the passengers on my bus. Come along for the ride!

Gold Panning Tours

Each day in Skagway, we recreate the spirit of the Gold Rush through our Gold Panning Tours. One of the places we pan for gold is at Alaska 360; the locals call it Dredgetown. Costumed “Klondikers” teach my passengers how to placer mine – or pan – for gold. It’s a tedious technique of separating out the heavier gold flakes from the gravel by shaking them to the bottom of a pan of water. We also get to learn about more modern and large-scale dredging operations which scoop up huge quantities of gravel from the bottom of a stream as the machine moves up river.

During this time, I mingle with my passengers and take pictures of them panning for gold. But sometimes I get to pan too. So far I’ve made $38 in flakes! Unfortunately, we don’t really get to cash it in!

Liarsville

Another place we go panning for gold, and re-live the Gold Rush days, is at Liarsville. Historically, Liarsville was the tent camp of the newspapermen from the Lower 48. They had been dispatched to the Klondike from large newspapers down south (i.e. the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and San-Francisco Chronicle). Of course, happy get-rich stories sold papers, and they needed to keep their editors giddy with uplifting stories of gold discoveries. But carrying their typewriters up and over the mountains all the way to the Klondike did not seem like a good idea, so instead, the newspapermen established a river-side camp near Skagway and as the gold prospectors came through on their shuttles up and over the mountains, they told stories passed down along the trail. The newspapermen wrote those stories down as first-person accounts as if they were themselves in the Klondike, and that’s how their camp became known as “Liarsville”.

Today, the costumed Liarsville Players recreate 1898 with a historic tent city, a hilarious musical review about the history of the area, and they top it off with a fantastic salmon bake. I always love bringing my guests here!