Klondike Adventure for the eReader

North to the Yukon

In August of 1896, gold was discovered in the Yukon valley, but the world outside of the Yukon valley didn't learn of the discovery until the steamship Portland sailed into Seattle on the 17th of July, 1897. On board the Portland were 68 returning miners with a million dollars worth of gold. The owners of the Portland sold every berth for the return to Skagway (Skaguay) before nightfall, including one ticket sold to the mayor of Seattle, and the last of the North American Gold Rushes was on. It was called The Klondike Stampede and lasted three years (1897-1899).

In a land where rivers thawed for less than three months of the year, the trail to the gold fields stretched 600 miles from the Alaskan coast. Every miner would spend most of that first season just getting to the gold fields; a round trip was a year long affair in which each of the Stampeders would need a ton or more of supplies to survive. After 1897, Canada's Northwest Mounted Police turned back any miner who attempted to cross into Canadian territory from Alaska with less, and every ounce of it had to be carried or dragged over the mountains from the coast by a man, a dog or a horse.

To get to the gold fields, miners traveled north by boat to one of two trails across the coastal mountain range. Both trails crossed the range in a north-northeasterly direction to reach the Yukon valley that began on the other side. The Yukon drainage began with a string of lakes on the eastern side of the range and headed north. The southern route began at Skagway and crossed the mountains through the White Pass. It became known as "The Dead Horse Trail" for the corpses of the overworked horses that littered the trail. It was said that some of the horses committed suicide by walking over the sheer cliffs that bordered the trail, just to escape the misery of their burdens. A little ways north, and running almost parallel to the White Pass Trail was the trail over the Chilkoot Pass that began at Dyea (Die EEE). The Chilkoot Trail (a.k.a. The Golden Staircase) was the shorter route, by a few miles, but was too steep for horses for it included a 45 degree climb up the western slopes of the range. Both trails met at the town of Bennett, at the head of the Yukon valley.

During the gold rush years, Bennett was the place where the adventurers would stop to build boats, using tools that they brought over the mountains on the back of a horse or a dog sled. They would need those boats to sail down the Yukon to Dawson and the gold fields. By the time they reached Dawson, the miners had travelled 600 miles on foot and river boat, in a land where snow and ice cover the earth, the lakes and the rivers for nine months of the year.

Bennett is now a ghost town, marked by a train station that is still served by a narrow gauge railway from Skagway. The railway was begun in 1897 to carry miners over the White Pass from Skagway. These days, Bennett is the turn-around point for the railway and the backpackers who hike the trail through Chilkoot Pass from Dyea and then ride the train back from Bennett to Skagway.

Jack London (1876-1916)

This edition of Call of the Wild includes Over the Chilkoot Pass to the Yukon, a report by Major General Frederick Funston of his travels of the Chilkoot Pass into the Yukon valley in 1893, four years before The Stampede began. Funston's report is a very good account of what the trip would have been like for many of the stampeders who passed over The Golden Staircase.

Call of the Wild (1900)

The Call of the Wild by John Griffith London

Size: 116 KB

Burning Daylight (1910)

Here's another tale of the Yukon by John Griffith London, but it's not another dog tale. "Burning Daylight" is the nickname of the central character in this one, and he's a gold hunter, and this is a tale of life in the gold fields. This ebook is an IBC preview edition.

Burning Daylight by John Griffith London

Size: 342 KB

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