The Great Klondike Gold Rush

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On June 16^th 1897, the steamer Excelsior cruised into San Francisco Bay, completing its long voyage from Alaska. While a ship arriving from the far north was not a particularly unusual event, this one heralded news of something truly big. She had on board a number of prospectors who had wintered in the Yukon River country in a remote part of northern Canada. As the prospectors disembarked, they staggered under the weight of their heavy baggage, boxes and bundles. On the next day, the steam ship Portland arrived in Seattle, also carrying on board a group of prospectors who had wintered in the same area near the Yukon River. Curiously, these miners were also overloaded with heavy baggage.

It did not take long for the stories of these miners to light up phone and telegraph lines across the USA. Newspapers from one coast to the other shouted out the story with sensational fury – KLONDIKE GOLD! The stories of wonderful riches from a new discovery were backed up by prodigious displays of large gold nuggets and sacks of gold displayed in the windows of local shops and hotels. One mans fortune, consisting of over 6,000 ounces of gold recovered from the new diggings in only a few month’s time, was prominently displayed in the window of a San Francisco shop. Men who dreamed of fortune and opportunity needed no special invitation to proceed. Thousands hastily made plans to head north. The stampede was on!

In the years after the 40-Mile discovery, prospectors pushed outward and explored the area and some even passed through the Klondike region, but because of its flat valley formation and great depth to bedrock, it was considered a poor location with little if any gold potential. Among the adventurous individuals attracted to 40-Mile district was one Robert Henderson from Aspen Colorado. Henderson was of Scotch parentage, and a Canadian by birth. While prospecting the upper tributaries of the Indian River, Henderson crossed over a sharp divide and taking a few pans of material from the creek below, found some excellent prospects running about 8 cents to the pan. This would yield good wages and Henderson convinced three other miners to join him in opening up that little creek, named “Gold Bottom” by Henderson. The four miners managed to pull out $750 in a few weeks time. This was the first gold taken from the Klondike drainage system, but Gold Bottom was by no means the richest part of the Klondike find.

By early August, the party ran out of provisions and Henderson set off for the nearest supply point. Unlike many others who made original finds, Henderson spoke freely of his find with others and even encouraged them to go up to Gold Bottom creek and stake a claim for themselves. On his return voyage, he came upon Siwash Charlie, a white man with an Indian wife and his two Indian companions. He encouraged Charlie to get on up to Gold Bottom and put in a claim. Charlie followed soon after Henderson left, but he and his party took a different, more direct route. Charlie and the two men that were with him staked claims at gold bottom, and left shortly afterward. They prospected on the way down river returning by the same way they came at a place known then as Rabbit Creek. One of Charlie’s companions, Sookum Jim, took a pan full of gravel next to an old tree. To his surprise it was rich with coarse gold! This was especially unusual, in that this gravel was nowhere near the bedrock. In spite of that, the gravel yielded from 10 cents to a dollar a pan, and they quickly filled up a shotgun cartridge with coarse nuggets. Charlie and his companions all staked claims and then returned to 40 Mile Camp to file the paperwork and let everyone know if their rich findings. He renamed the drainage Bonanza Creek. The first stage of the rush was on and a number of folks headed up to the new diggings. Many of the early diggers did very well for themselves. The first group of men to use a sluice box on Bonanza Creek recovered better than 13 ounces of gold for one man shoving gravel for 5 hours. It was later determined that these surface deposits came from rich bench gravel which had slid down the hill due to frost heaving, but the miners had not yet figured that out.

The rich surface gravels played out quickly and for a time many of the locals thought the Klondike was just a fluke or a sham, as the old miners just could not get over the idea that a flat bottomed valley with deep soil covering could actually have significant gold. It took some considerable time to prove up the deposit as some of the miners dug shafts down through the muck to bedrock to see what the bedrock would hold. Many experienced miners hiked into the area, saw the workings in the flat open valley and angrily turned around and left, annoyed with the fool who had encouraged them to waste their time by going up there. During this time, claims that later yielded huge amounts of gold, sold for just a trifling. Many of the experienced miners were familiar with the area and knew that nothing much better than just “wages” had ever been found in that whole region, and that it had been well prospected. Miners who had worked in that region were barely able to pay their bills and purchase a grubstake for the following year. No important strikes had ever been made, so the many saw the announcements of great finds in the Klondike region as nothing more than a sham.

However, it wasn’t long before the men tunneling down through the muck hit the rich gravel deposits on bedrock and the true value of the original strike was proved up. It was often necessary to put down a series of shafts across the valley to find the rich gravel on bedrock, as they often occupied only a narrow paystreak. Extremely rich gravels were found on both Bonanza and El Dorado creeks. The neighboring towns of 40-Mile and Circle City were basically emptied as hundreds of miners headed for the now proven new strike. Tens of thousands of dollars were taken out on numerous claims over that winter as the miners worked the frozen ground by melting the ice with fires. The gold was generally coarse with the largest nugget from that first season weighing in at about 35 ounces. Because the gravels could only be worked when flowing waters were available, most miners simply piled their gravels into large dumps around the shafts they were working to wait until spring when the gravels could be sluiced. Production that first winter amounted to more than 1. 5 million dollars, and a good number of the long time prospectors in the area decided to take their riches and head south to the states so they could enjoy the fruits of their labor. They packed up their gold and headed down the long and winding Yukon River to St. Michael on the Bearing Sea. From there they took the steam ships Excelsior and Portland back to the US, where the rush to the Klondike region began in earnest, and the whole world heard the news.

While the original prospectors who were in the area when the first discoveries were made in 1896 got in on the best claims, the Klondike held a few significant surprises for the newcomers arriving in the spring of 1897. A number of prospectors began to make significant strikes in bench gravels up on the hillsides above the creeks.  Just as no one believed that the flat-bottomed creek could hold significant gold deposits, the miners were shocked to find that there was also gold under thin a capping of soil up on the sides of the hills.

Placer mining has continued in the Klondike region for over a century, and still continues to this day. Other discoveries of gold have been made in the region, but none as rich as those fantastic finds on Bonanza and El Dorado Creeks. Mining techniques have, of course, changed dramatically. Narrow shafts with smoldering fires built to melt the frozen gravel are no longer used, and instead modern miners are using diesel equipment like bulldozers and other earthmoving equipment operate efficient, low cost operations. These modern mines are subject to stringent environmental requirements and are regulated by the Canadian government. Sluice box waters are no longer simply allowed to flow where they may, but are impounded to keep silt and mud out of the streams. Surface disturbances are reclaimed as well. While today’s methods may be much different, it is still the call of gold that lures the miners of today just as it did the Klondike stampeders of more than 100 years ago.

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