On August 16, 1896, on Bonanza Creek, which flows into the Klondike River in Alaska, prospectors George Carmack, Jim Skookum And Charlie Dawson discovered a scattering of gold nuggets. This moment is considered the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush - unorganized mass gold mining in Alaska in late XIX century.
The systemic development of Alaska by American colonists began only seven years after this icy peninsula was bought by the United States from Russia. In 1874 Jack McQuesten And Alfred Mayo established a trading post for the Alaska Fort Reliance Commercial Company near present-day Dawson.
The company traded in furs and equipment for miners for a percentage of the gold found in the future. Despite the fact that no gold was found at first, the trade continued. The situation changed when gold was discovered on the Stewart River in 1885.
Faced with a small boom, the company closed part of the fur trade and focused on goods for miners. Although gold on the Stewart River quickly ran out, even before that, prospectors found it on the Fortymile River.
The Fortymile (Fortieth Mile) River takes its name from the distance from Fort Reliance - it enters the Yukon 40 miles downstream. The gold discovered here led to the emergence in the winter of 1887 of Forty Mile, the first city in the Yukon Territory.
In 1895, $400,000 worth of gold was mined in the Fortymile and Sixtymile areas (60 miles upstream). By that time, about 1,000 prospectors lived in Forty Mile. Surprisingly, in addition to saloons and shops, the town had a library and a Shakespeare club, an opera house with a troupe from San Francisco, and a tobacco factory. It was in this settlement that the Canadian office for registering gold mining sites was located.
But soon Forty Mile had a competitor. Gold was found in Alaska in Birch Creek County. New town prospectors was called Circle City, as it was located exactly on the Arctic Circle. Many prospectors left Forty Mile to move to Circle City. However, things have not yet reached a real gold boom.
Its premises appeared after a well-known prospector Robert Henderson went in search of gold to the Klondike River, which flows into the Yukon. On the north bank of the Klondike, he discovered several streams, and in one of them (Rabbit Creek) he panned a significant amount of gold. The prospector called this place a "gold mine".
In the summer of 1896, Henderson traveled south to restock food and supplies. On the way back he met George Carmack, his wife, an Indian of the Tagish tribe. Keith Carmack, her brother Jim Skookum and nephew Charlie Dawson. Since the prospector needed helpers, he decided to tell his new acquaintances about the Klondike gold.
Carmack himself was not interested in the news, but it attracted the attention of Skookum, who wanted to become a prospector. He persuaded the others, and as a result, Carmack, Skookum and Dawson reached the "bonanza" in August.
At first they washed gold there, and then they moved downstream, where another stream flowing from the south (Bonanza Creek) flowed into Rabbit Creek. It is still unclear exactly who exactly found the first nugget. Each of the participants told their version of what happened. But it is known for sure that this famous piece of gold was found on August 16, 1896. It weighed about a quarter of an ounce and cost $4 at that time.
Looking closer, the prospectors found a large scattering of nuggets at the bottom of the stream and rushed to collect them. Soon they completely filled the hard drive case with gold. Not surprisingly, the creek was later named Eldorado.
The miners staked out the plots and went to Forty Mile, where they were supposed to register them. At first, Carmack was simply not believed in the company's office. True, distrust immediately vanished when he showed the astonished clerks a gun case stuffed with gold.
The rumor about gold immediately spread throughout the community of prospectors in Alaska, and by September the entire region of streams in this place of the Klondike was staked out - there was no free land left there at all. Carmack himself mined $1,400 worth of gold in less than a month. If converted at the gold rate, then today it is about 133,000 dollars.
However, it took another year for the information to reach the big light. Gold was not exported until June 1897, when navigation was opened and the ocean liners Excelsior and Portland took cargo from the Klondike.
The Excelsior arrived in San Francisco on July 15, 1897, with a cargo worth about half a million dollars, piqued the interest of the public. When the Portland arrived in Seattle two days later with an even larger cargo of gold, it was already greeted by a crowd. Newspapers actively fueled interest, reporting on the incredible wealth of the Klondike. The gold rush has begun.
It turned into a real boom after the results of the report became known on the "mainland" William Ogilvie, who, on the instructions of the Canadian government, was engaged in geodetic work in the gold-bearing region of the Klondike. According to him, during the winter of 1896-1897, gold was mined in the amount of 2.5 million dollars.
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The entourage of the times of the Gold Rush was used by the authors to decorate this, in fact, an ordinary classic "Kerchief". Klondike implies a cumulative result, this word is the best fit for this game. Gold, gold and more gold. The better you understand solitaire, the more gold you will be able to earn as well.
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A game in categories Solitaire, Cards, Logic is available for free, around the clock and without registering with a description in Russian on Min2Win. If the capabilities of the electronic desktop allow, you can expand the GOLDEN KLONDIKE plot in full screen and enhance the effect of the passage of scenarios. Many things really make sense to consider in more detail.
On June 26, 1925, exactly 90 years ago, the premiere of Chaplin's famous film "The Gold Rush" took place. The picture, taken 29 years after the outbreak of the gold rush in Alaska, largely recreates that historical phenomenon. To add credibility, Chaplin even hired 2,500 tramps who waved picks, imitating the work of prospectors. However, in 95 minutes of screen time it is impossible to reflect all the details of the life of gold miners. Yes, this was not required, because in comedy there is no place for tragedies and the collapse of illusions that lay in wait for prospectors at every turn. And the on-screen Charlie, who became fabulously rich and met happiness in the mines, was a rare exception in the Klondike.
In 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush began - perhaps the most famous in history. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not at all necessary to mine it. On September 5, 1896, the steamship Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were hundreds of miners from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a case from a hard drive, completely stuffed with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and massive gold rush in history...
Let's find out the details...
Went for salmon, came back with gold
The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold had been found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. Missionaries and fur traders were the first to notice the precious metal in local rivers back in the 40s of the 19th century, but they kept silent. The first - because of the fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of those just converted to new faith Indians. The second - because they considered the fur trade a more profitable business than gold mining.
But still, in the early 50s, the first prospectors appeared on the Fraser River in British Columbia. There were few of them: the mines here were not very rich, and besides, the gold rush in California was in full swing. But as California's reserves dwindled, the migration of miners intensified. With varying success, they explored the channels of Canadian rivers, gradually moving north, to the border with Alaska.
Even the first cities of prospectors appeared. First, Forty Mile is a settlement on the bend of the river of the same name and the Yukon. When gold was found just to the north, many miners moved to the new village of Circle City. They mined a little gold here, but still managed to equip their life. Two theaters, a music salon and 28 saloons were opened here for a thousand and a little inhabitants - that is, a saloon for about every 40 people!
George Carmack
Any natural disaster - and the gold rush for the vast majority of its participants was just a disaster - begins by chance, with some trifle. In early August 1896, three residents of the Canadian state of Yukon, bordering Alaska to the north, set off in search of lost Kate and George Carmacks. A couple of days later, they were found at the mouth of the Klondike River, where they harvested salmon for the winter.
Then these five people wandered around for a while and came across the richest placers of gold, which simply sparkled in the stream, and it could be collected with bare hands.
On September 5, George Carmack brought a couple of kilograms of gold dust to the village of Circle City to exchange it for currency and necessary goods. Circle City, in which about a thousand people lived, was instantly deserted - everyone rushed to the mouth of the Klondike. Exactly the same insanity seized the inhabitants of the entire district. Thus, about three thousand people gathered in the autumn of 1896 to extract gold in the places of its richest deposits. It was they who managed to grab the bird of happiness by the tail. Gold lay literally underfoot, and it was possible to collect it without encountering fierce resistance from competitors. In 1896 there was enough gold for everyone in the Klondike.
These lucky ones were obliged to such a lafa by the remoteness of the region from civilization and the absence of transport and information communications with major cities located much further south. It was these three thousand people, with rare exceptions, who panned gold for many thousands of dollars. However, not all of them wisely disposed of what they had acquired, for most of the golden sand leaked between their fingers.
To decently earned one should also include at most a thousand and a half of those who subsequently arrived in the Yukon from other regions of the world, including even Australia. This already had to literally fight for gold. And endure incredible hardships, because they were not adapted to hard work in the harsh conditions of the north.
You have to admit, they were lucky. Winter began, there was no connection with the “mainland”, no one could either come to the Yukon or leave here, and the broad circles of the American public learned about new gold deposits only in the summer of next year. A thousand miners got the opportunity to pan for gold in the most fertile areas for six months, without worrying about competitors.
The real gold rush began only after these miners brought their gold to the " big land". On July 14, 1897, the steamship Excelsior entered the port of San Francisco. He was flying from Alaska. Each passenger had gold sand in their hands in the amount of $5,000 to $130,000. To understand what this means in modern prices, feel free to multiply by 20. It turns out that the poorest passenger on the flight had $100,000 in his pocket.
And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, the Portland, entered the port of Seattle. There were three tons of gold on board the Portland: sand and nuggets in dirty canvas bags, on which their rightful owners sat, beaming with a weather-beaten smile between frostbitten cheeks. After that, the United States of America (and then the rest of the world, civilized and not so) went crazy in unison. People abandoned their jobs and families, pawned their last possessions, and rushed north. Police officers left their posts, carriage drivers left trams, pastors - parishes.
The mayor of Seattle, who was on a business trip to San Francisco, telegraphed his resignation and, without returning to Seattle, rushed to the Klondike. The venerable thirty-year-old housewife Mildred Blenkins, the mother of three children, went out shopping and did not return home: having taken the savings she shared with her husband from the bank, she got to Dawson and flaunted there in cloth pants, reselling food and building materials. By the way, old Millie did not lose: three years later she returned to her family, bringing with her as a redeeming gift of golden sand for 190 thousand dollars.
"It's time to go to the Klondike country, where there is as much gold as sawdust," The Seattle Daily Times, the city's newspaper, wrote the next day.
And came chain reaction. Dozens of ships went north. By September, 10,000 people had left Seattle for Alaska. Winter brought the fever to a halt, but the following spring, more than 100,000 fortune hunters took the same route.
Of course, few people understood what he was going for. The easiest route to the Klondike looked like this: several thousand kilometers across the ocean to Alaska, then crossing the Chilkoot pass, a kilometer high, a queue of several thousand people. Moreover, it was possible to overcome it only on foot - pack animals could not climb the steep slope. The horses and dogs on the slope were powerless. True, there were Indians who could be hired to carry at the rate of a dollar per pound of luggage. But that kind of money was found only in eccentric millionaires, who, however, came across in the Yukon more often than in restaurants in Nice. Additional Difficulty: in order to avoid starvation, the Canadian authorities did not let people through the pass if the prospector did not have at least 800 kg of food with him. Some swung up and down forty times to carry the load. They crawled so tightly that, having fallen out of the queue, one could wait five or six hours to get back into line. Frequent avalanches buried both people and belongings under them.
Prospectors overcome the Chilkoot Pass
Those who crossed the Chilkoot cut wood, built rafts, boats - in short, everything that kept them and supplies afloat, and prepared for the last push along the Yukon River. In May 1898, as soon as the river was free of ice, a flotilla of seven thousand so-called ships set off on an 800-kilometer voyage downstream.
The rapids and narrow canyons shattered the dreams and lives of many: of the 100,000 adventurers who disembarked in Skagway, only 30,000 reached Dawson, at that time a nondescript Indian village. Of these, a few hundred at best made a fortune on the mined gold.
Acquired by hard work
The statistics of the two-year gold rush that swept the Yukon and spread to Alaska are very sad. During this period, about 200 thousand people tried to find their financial happiness in the northern regions. Happiness was found, as it was said, by 4 thousand people. But those who found death here were much more - according to various estimates, from 15 to 25 thousand people.
Troubles began immediately, as soon as the fortune-catchers got on the ship to Alaska, where it was necessary to overcome the steep Chilkut pass, which the pack animals were not able to master. Here they were met by the Canadian police, who let only those who had at least 800 kilograms of food go through. Also, the police restricted the import of firearms into the country, so that large-scale battles did not take place in the mines, which threatened to spread to the territories of Canada located to the south.
This was followed by a crossing over Lake Lindeman, a 70-kilometer off-road crossing and an 800-kilometer rafting along the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Not everyone made it to the mines.
A harsh climate with strong (up to 40 degrees) frosts in winter and sweltering heat in summer awaited people on the site. People died from hunger, and from diseases, and from accidents during work, and from skirmishes with competitors. The situation was aggravated by the fact that a significant number of “white-collar workers” came to mine gold - clerks, teachers, doctors, who were unaccustomed to hard physical labor or everyday hardships. This was due to the fact that America at that time was going through far from the best economic times.
And the work was really hard. After quickly collecting gold from the surface of the earth, it was necessary to shovel the soil. And he was frozen for most of the year. And it had to be warmed up with fires. During the California gold rush, it was much easier for prospectors.
Decided to try his luck and aspiring writer Jack London, who was forced to leave the University of California due to the inability to pay for his studies. In 1897, at the age of 21, he reached the mines and staked out a site with his comrades. But there was no gold on it. And future famous writer was forced to sit on an empty plot with no hope of enrichment, waiting for spring, when it would be possible to get out of the lands cursed by providence. In winter, he fell ill with scurvy, frostbite, lost all the cash he had ... And we, the readers, were very lucky that he survived, returned to his homeland and wrote great novels and brilliant cycles of stories.
It must be said that there was not so much gold washed over 2 years of feverish mining for each prospector. In the modern scale of prices, this is 4.4 billion dollars, which should be divided by 200 thousand people. It turns out only 22 thousand dollars.
But one of the most intelligent and visionary entrepreneurs was John Ladyu. 6 years before the start of the gold rush, he founded a trading post in northern Canada, supplying local residents with everything they needed, as well as prospectors who at that time mined gold in very modest amounts.
When in September 1896 all the surrounding residents rushed to the mouth of the Klondike to the placers discovered by Carmack, Ladyu did not stand aside. But he bought not a gold-bearing plot, but 70 hectares of land that no one needed. Then he brought food supplies to them, built a house, a warehouse and a sawmill, founding the village of Dawson. When tens of thousands of fortune-catchers rushed to the mouth of the Klondike the next spring, all residential buildings and infrastructure buildings were built on Ladu's land, which brought him huge profits. And very soon Ladyu became a multimillionaire, and the village grew to the size of a city with a population of 40,000.
Skagway now: a former brothel, now a popular pub
In terms of prudence, only one more person can be compared with John LaDue. Retired Captain William Moore bought land in Skagway Bay ten years before the start of the gold rush. A former sailor, he noticed that this was the only place for a hundred miles where the fairway allowed large ships to approach the shore. For ten years, he and his son slowly built a wharf, warehouses and a sawmill in Skagway. Moore's calculation was simple: prospectors explore all the rivers to the south, which means that someday they will get to these places.
The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and William Moore's farm turned into a large city at that time.
It was worse for the gold diggers, who were just starting their way to the Klondike. in Alaska. From the spring of 1898, about a thousand prospectors passed through Skagway each month on their way to Dawson. Overcrowded towns in southern Alaska have become a haven for thousands of men languishing in anticipation of leaving north. To entertain this restless public, numerous "saloons" and simply dens arose in Skagway.
"Slippery" Smith (center) in his saloon. 1898
The king of this shady world of Alaska was a man nicknamed "Slippery" (Soapy). His real name was Jefferson Randolph Smith II. By 1884 "Slippery" claimed the role of king underworld in Denver, organizing fictitious lotteries. For excessive claims, competing gangs tried to kill Smith in 1889, but he managed to fight back. It got to the point that Denver City Hall had to repel attacks by gangsters with guns. Smith realized that his gang could not resist the artillery, and chose to move to Alaska in 1896.
"Slippery" was ahead of the main wave of gold diggers by a year and managed to prepare well for it. He acted in the usual way. In Skagway, he first organized a gambling establishment in the "saloon". Smith then set up telegram reception by arranging a poker game nearby, which ended in an almost predictable loss for the sender of the telegram. It never occurred to the gullible gold diggers that the nearest telegraph pole was hundreds of miles away. Not everyone understood that they were cheated. And those who understood were in too much of a hurry to get to the cherished Klondike to waste time complaining.
A year later, Smith had strong competitors. In May 1898, under the direction of Canadian engineers, construction began on the White Pass & Yukon narrow gauge railway, which was supposed to connect Skagway with the village of Whitehorse. "Slippery" realized that the gold diggers, moving without delay from the ship's gangway to the train car, would not become his clients, but it was not easy to fight the railway company. The gold diggers themselves have also become bolder. On the evening of July 8, 1898, a meeting of "vigilants" (citizens engaged in lynching) was convened in Skagway. Drunk Smith went to this meeting, but he was not allowed to go there. A verbal skirmish began, which gradually turned into a shootout, during which "Slippery" was killed. The criminal kingdom in Skagway has come to an end.
But still, the biggest fortunes on the Klondike fever were made by those who understood the mechanisms of trade. At the height of the gold boom, commodity prices in Dawson and other mining towns were not only high, they were fabulously high.
Start with what it took to get to Dawson. Indian porters at the height of the fever charged $15,000 at today's prices to carry a ton of cargo across Chinkuk Pass.
For clarity, we will continue to operate with today's prices. A boat capable of rafting 800 miles across the Yukon could not be bought for less than $10,000. The future writer Jack London, who ended up in the Yukon in the summer of 1897, made money by helping guide boats of inexperienced prospectors through river hummocks. For a boat, he took in a divine way - about $ 600. And over the summer he earned $ 75 thousand. For comparison: before leaving for the Klondike, London worked at a jute factory and received $ 2.5 per hour of work. This is $170 per week and 2300 for three months. That is, thirty times less than on the Yukon hummocks.
Like soldiers in a war, the people of Dawson lived in the present. Cancan hostess Gertie Diamond Tooth (the entertainment business was doing so well she got one for herself) accurately described the situation: “These unfortunate people are just itching to blow their money as quickly as they are afraid to give their soul to God before they dig up everything that is there. still left." Pain, despair and icy corpses in the frost-bitten huts coexisted perfectly with the chansonettes, who stood ankle-deep in nuggets on the Monte Carlo stage. The feral miners spent fortunes for the right to dance with the sisters Jacqueline and Rosalind, known as Vaseline and Glycerine.
Of course, the prices can be explained by the difficulties of delivery to godforsaken areas. But greed and monopoly played their part, of course. So, the supply of products to Dawson was almost completely controlled by one person - Canadian Alex McDonald, nicknamed Big Alex. A year after the start of the gold rush, Big Alex's fortune was estimated at $ 5 million, and he himself received the title of "King of the Klondike". He not only bought up dozens of "applications", but also hired bankrupt prospectors to work at his mines. As a result, MacDonald earned $ 5 million and received the unofficial title of "King of the Klondike". True, the ending of the buyer of real estate turned out to be sad. Having concentrated huge plots of land in his hands, MacDonald did not want to part with them in time. As a result, the price of mountains and forests with depleted deposits fell, and the "King of the Klondike" went bankrupt.
Belinda Mulroney
Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started off as a clothing speculator—brought $5,000 worth of clothes to shabby prospectors that sold for $30,000—and then switched to whiskey and shoes, selling wellington boots for $100 a pair. And she also became a millionaire. Having learned about the discovery of gold in the Nome region, the "queen" of the Klondike immediately moved to Alaska. She was still resourceful and enterprising. The "queen" Belinda did not receive the throne, but she managed to marry a French swindler who declared himself a count. Mulroney's money was invested in the European Shipping Company. The "Queen of the Klondike" lived in London, without denying herself anything, until 1914, when the war led to the collapse of shipping and the ruin of many companies. Belinda Mulroney died in poverty.
Moreover, these people were not pioneers. Entrepreneurial people have long known how to make money on the gold rush. A few decades earlier, when California was in a fever, the first millionaire was not some guy with a pick and a shovel, but the one who sold these shovels to the guys. His name was Samuel Brennan, and he was in the right place at the right time.
Samuel Brennan
Bigamist, adventurer, alcoholic, and head of the San Francisco Mormon community, Samuel Brennan, among other things, was "famous" for the phrase: "I will give you the Lord's money when you send me a receipt signed by him."
And it was like that. At the height of the gold rush in California, many Mormons came there. Religion obliged them to give God a tenth of what they earned. The Mormon miners brought the tithe of the washed gold to Samuel. And he was obliged to transport him to Utah, to the headquarters of the church. But no parcels of golden sand from California came. When it was hinted to Brennan from Utah that it was not good to embezzle God's money, he answered with the same phrase about the receipt.
By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day, the discoverer of Californian gold, James Marshall, came to him - then a modest shepherd and owner of a small store. He had found the gold a couple of months before, but kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid off in Brennan's store with gold dust. And to prove that the gold is real, he confessed where he found it.
The pastor used the situation to his advantage. In the next few days, he bought up all the shovels and other household utensils around the area. And then he published a note in his newspaper that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store is the only one on the road from San Francisco to the mines, which means that the prospectors will pay as much as he asks. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $500, bought by him at $10. For a sieve that cost him $4, he asked for $200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years passed, and he was no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California state senator.
However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, embarrassed to send him a receipt for tithing, found another way to remind him of justice. Several risky financial transactions and a scandalous divorce bankrupted California's first millionaire. He met his old age by sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.
Most of the prospectors ended their lives in much the same way. Even having washed up millions on the rivers of the Yukon, they could not cope with their passions. Saloons, brothels, casinos - the service industry knew how to get money out of their pockets. Writer Bret Garth, who became famous for describing the life of miners, tells about a man who, having profitably sold his land, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. Witnesses of the gold rush in Australia in their memoirs shared memories of characters who in local taverns lit pipes from five-pound bills (it's like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid cabbies with handfuls of golden sand.
The queue for licenses for gold mining.
Campground on the shores of Lake Bennett. In this place, gold miners built or bought boats to sail further to the Klondike by water.
Another, already more capital settlement of gold miners.
The shortest but most difficult route to the Klondike was over the Chilkoot Pass, over 1,200 meters high. The most reckless and hurried overcame this pass even in winter, and at first there were many of them.
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Mining went on all year round. In winter, the frozen ground was hollowed out with pickaxes or warmed up with fires.
An artel of gold miners at work.
A group of prospectors on their way to the Klondike.
Perhaps the only ones who really and fabulously got rich on the "gold rush" were dealers who bought precious metal cheaply from miners. A respectable gentleman, seated on the left, poses with bags of gold he bought in the previous fortnight. The chests may also contain gold. Of course, a guard with a revolver with such a still life is far from superfluous.
On the left is the cover of the April 1898 Klondike News, with an optimistic forecast of $40 million worth of gold this year.
And the right picture from the English magazine "Punch" for the same year, as it were, warns adventurers what most of them actually expect in the Klondike.
Before the Klondike, humanity has been swept by gold rushes more than once. People went to Australia, then to California, then to Siberia covered with snow to dig up this precious metal. However, what happened in Alaska is often called the last great gold rush - there was no more excitement of this magnitude. And this whole story began in August 1896, when the Scot Robert Henderson landed on Canadian soil. It was he who was to find gold in the Klondike. And, a lot of gold.
Initially, Robert Henderson did not find what he was looking for here. However, he did not give up and continued his search away from the mountain Dome of King Solomon. Many streams flowed from it, one of which was called Rabbit Creek. After washing the rock, Henderson was surprised at how much gold was left on the fleecy lock. Since it was customary among gold miners to share all the information, the news about the found deposit instantly spread around all the local residents. Soon George Carmack and Indian Jim Skookum came out to "hunt". They were the first to set up a site on Bonanza Creek and quickly broke Henderson's record. Then people from all over the American continent began to join them.
Gold miners and miners. (wikipedia.org)
But the real explosion came in the summer of 1897. Prior to this, it was not possible to take gold out of the Klondike. And when half a million dollars' worth of pure metal was loaded onto the Excelsior ship and brought to coastal cities, every American layman became aware of this. Moreover, the next cargo of the Portland ship, more than a ton of metal, only whetted the appetite: all the Seattle newspapers trumpeted about it. And it is not surprising that thousands, no, tens of thousands of people poured into the Klondike and Yukon.
However, the road to the deposits was extremely difficult. There were three main routes: the shortest, most popular, and at the same time the most dangerous, ran by sea, and then through the Chilkoot Pass; the second is upstream of the Yukon River; the third - along the Canadian rivers and the city of Edmonton. At least 20,000 people crossed the Chilkoot Pass when the gold rush peaked in 1897-1899. The winter in those parts is very cold, and few have passed through the many passages in the mountain gorges without suffering. At the end of the road, tired travelers were waiting for the city of Dawson, where all roads led and gold diggers, prostitutes, gamblers and adventurers flocked.
Gold miners cross the Chilkoot Pass. (wikipedia.org)
All life in the Klondike was concentrated in the town of Dawson. It has become a capital for gold miners. The city itself grew up around the site of Joseph Ladoux. The seeker built a hut and warehouse for himself, naming the settlement after the famous geographer George Dawson, who studied the local gold deposits. Soon the village grew into a full-fledged city, where a special economy and management system developed. For example, due to an acute shortage of provisions, a cow could cost as much as 16 thousand dollars, and salt was equal in price to gold. But the noble metal here has become the cheapest commodity in the world!
The Canadian government became interested in the gold rush. And it is not surprising, because citizens of neighboring America came to the Yukon and Klondike in whole batches. In addition, they preferred to use American stamps, and this could not but cause concern among Canadians - what if Washington decides to take away the entire Yukon River basin. The boundaries were blurred, and therefore the Canadian authorities formed a separate district, the territories of which were tied not to meridians, as is customary, but to gold mining areas. So the Canadians managed to establish laws in places where the fever raged.
Moreover, whole squadrons of the so-called North-Western Mounted Police arrived here. Their units not only monitored the observance of order on the ground, but also cordially received the miners, collecting customs duties from them. Nevertheless, seekers were allowed to trade in gambling and prostitution. Thanks to mounted police, the Klondike gold rush has been called the most peaceful and tranquil in history.
Gold Rush Map. (wikipedia.org)
Democracy reigned in Dawson itself - the power belonged to the inhabitants. They themselves decided how to manage the settlement and how to punish criminals for theft and other violations. The mines clung to rivers of gold. As you know, the Klondike flows into the Yukon, and it flows further to the sea, crossing the American border of Alaska. On both sides of the border there were sites of seekers.
The Canadian system of regulation that extended to the territory of this dominion was built on the rigid rigor and experience of gold mining in British Columbia. Only the gold commissioner enjoyed great influence, while the American system turned out to be freer and not reduced to a list of inviolable laws. Former prospectors from California came to Alaska, where they also found a lot of gold in their time and where the traditions of self-government were established. Important decisions were made by majority vote at general meetings. According to the stories of participants in the gold rush, the Circle City settlement normally existed without trial and prison.
Camp on the Yukon River. (wikipedia.org)
The Klondike fever has left its mark on history and culture. According to the most modest data, about 200 thousand people took part in it, but only a negligible part managed to make capital. The main phase of gold mining ended in 1899, and for another ten years there were outbreaks in Alaska. The events of the end of the century caused indignation in the Russian public as well. The ruling Romanov Dynasty was reproached for the fact that Alexander II was practically worthless to the United States, having missed the opportunity to enrich himself.
Original taken from amarok_man in the Klondike Gold Diggers. Photo
In September 1896, the most famous California gold rush in history began. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not necessary to mine it - it is enough to know how to lure nuggets out of the pockets of miners.
On September 5, 1896, the steamship Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were hundreds of miners from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a case from a hard drive, completely stuffed with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and large-scale gold rush in history.
The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold had been found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. Missionaries and fur traders were the first to notice the precious metal in local rivers back in the 40s of the 19th century, but they kept silent. The first - because of the fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of the Indians who have just converted to a new faith. The second - because they considered the fur trade a more profitable business than gold mining.
But still, in the early 50s, the first prospectors appeared on the Fraser River in British Columbia. There were few of them: the mines here were not very rich, and besides, the gold rush in California was in full swing. But as California's reserves dwindled, the migration of miners intensified. With varying success, they explored the channels of Canadian rivers, gradually moving north, to the border with Alaska.
Even the first cities of prospectors appeared. First, Forty Mile is a settlement on the bend of the river of the same name and the Yukon. When gold was found just to the north, many miners moved to the new village of Circle City. They mined a little gold here, but still managed to equip their life. Two theaters, a music salon and 28 saloons were opened here for a thousand and a little inhabitants - that is, a saloon for about every 40 people (!).
A wave of miners .
The measured life of prospectors in British Columbia was broken by George Carmack. He found such placers of gold, which the inhabitants of Circle City could not even dream of. When in November 1896 the news about new deposits reached this city, it was empty in just a few days. Everyone went to the future capital of the gold rush - Dawson.
You have to admit, they were lucky. Winter began, there was no connection with the “mainland”, no one could either come to the Yukon or leave here, and the broad circles of the American public learned about new gold deposits only in the summer of next year. A thousand miners got the opportunity to pan for gold in the most fertile areas for six months, without worrying about competitors.
The real gold rush began only after these prospectors brought their gold to the “mainland” with the beginning of summer. On July 14, 1897, the steamship Excelsior entered the port of San Francisco. He was flying from Alaska. Each passenger had gold sand in their hands in the amount of $5,000 to $130,000. To understand what this means in modern prices, feel free to multiply by 20. It turns out that the poorest passenger on the flight had $100,000 in his pocket.
And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, the Portland, entered the port of Seattle. On board were 68 passengers and their ton of gold. “Now is the time to go to the Klondike country, where there is as much gold as sawdust,” wrote the city newspaper The Seattle Daily Times the next day.
And there was a chain reaction. Dozens of ships went north. By September, 10,000 people had left Seattle for Alaska. Winter brought the fever to a halt, but the following spring, more than 100,000 fortune hunters took the same route.
Hundreds of miles to a dream
Of course, few people understood what he was going for. The easiest route to the Klondike looked like this: several thousand kilometers across the ocean to Alaska, then crossing the Chilkoot pass, a kilometer high, a queue of several thousand people. Moreover, it was possible to overcome it only on foot - pack animals could not climb the steep slope. An additional difficulty: in order to avoid starvation, the Canadian authorities were not allowed to cross the pass if the prospector did not have at least 800 kg of food with him.
Further - a crossing over Lake Lindeman and 800 km of rafting along the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Of the more than a hundred thousand who sailed to Alaska, no more than 30 thousand reached the gold mines. Of these, at best, a few hundred made a fortune on the mined gold.
But there were almost more people who actually earned on the prospectors. They didn't wash gold. They realized before others that they could make money not by digging into the permafrost in search of nuggets, but by luring these nuggets out of the pockets of prospectors for scarce services.
The power of premonition .
A native of New York, John LaDue, out of inexperience, also tried the profession of a prospector. Tried to pan for gold in North Dakota. When the idea turned out to be a failure, he became a sales agent. In 1890 he came to British Columbia as an employee of the Commercial Company of Alaska. To avoid competition, he opened a trading post (in other words, a small store with a warehouse) in the very wilderness - at the mouth of the Sixty Mile River. The nearest miners worked 25 miles from his shop, on the Forty Mile River. But Ladyu lured the miners by not selling, but giving away the inventory for free in exchange for a promise to pay for it as soon as the client finds gold.
When the first news came from the Klondike, John was one of those who were closest to the mines found by Carmack. He arrived there with the first prospectors. But unlike them, he staked out not gold-bearing areas, but 70 hectares that no one needed at the mouth of the Klondike River. He brought food supplies there, built a house, warehouses and a sawmill. That is how he became the founder of the village of Dawson. When the gold rush swept through the area, everything built in Dawson was built on LaDue land. A few years later he returned to New York as a millionaire
In terms of prudence, only one more person can be compared with John LaDue. Retired Captain William Moore bought land in Skagway Bay ten years before the start of the gold rush. A former sailor, he noticed that this was the only place for a hundred miles where the fairway allowed large ships to approach the shore. For ten years, he and his son slowly built a wharf, warehouses and a sawmill in Skagway. Moore's calculation was simple: prospectors explore all the rivers to the south, which means that someday they will get to these places.
The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and William Moore's farm turned into a large city at that time.
2000 rubles for scrambled eggs.
But still, the biggest fortunes on the Klondike fever were made by those who understood the mechanisms of trade. At the height of the gold boom, commodity prices in Dawson and other mining towns were not only high, they were fabulously high.
Start with what it took to get to Dawson. Indian porters at the height of the fever charged $15,000 at today's prices to carry a ton of cargo across Chinkuk Pass.
For clarity, we will continue to operate with today's prices. A boat capable of rafting 800 miles across the Yukon could not be bought for less than $10,000. The future writer Jack London, who ended up in the Yukon in the summer of 1897, made money by helping guide boats of inexperienced prospectors through river hummocks. For a boat, he took in a divine way - about $ 600. And over the summer he earned $ 75 thousand. For comparison: before leaving for the Klondike, London worked at a jute factory and received $ 2.5 per hour of work. This is $170 per week and 2300 for three months. That is, thirty times less than on the Yukon hummocks.
The Economics of Jack London.
In general, according to the stories of Jack London, one can easily study the economy of the Klondike. The heroes of his autobiographical stories sell elk meat for $140 per 1 kg, buy beans for $80. When Kid, the hero of Smoke and Kid, manages to get some cheap sugar, he marvels at the seller's compliance: "The weirdo only asked for $3 a pound." And this is no less than $ 150 per 1 kg. $83/kg Smoke and Kid pay for spoiled brisket to feed their dogs. Eggs cost $20 to $65 apiece in Dawson and other mining communities. The price of a kilogram of flour in the most remote villages reaches $450! In the story "Race", the Kid buys for almost $4,000 a used suit from someone else's shoulder that does not even fit him, and justifies himself to Smoke: "I thought it was remarkably cheap."
Of course, the prices can be explained by the difficulties of delivery to godforsaken areas. But greed and monopoly played their part, of course. So, the supply of products to Dawson was almost completely controlled by one person - Canadian Alex McDonald, nicknamed Big Alex. A year after the start of the gold rush, Big Alex's fortune was estimated at $ 5 million, and he himself received the title of "King of the Klondike".
Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started out speculating in clothes before moving into whiskey and shoes, selling wellington boots for $2,500 a pair. And she also became a millionaire.
Moreover, these people were not pioneers. Entrepreneurial people have long known how to make money on the gold rush. A few decades earlier, when California was in a fever, the first millionaire was not some guy with a pick and a shovel, but the one who sold these shovels to the guys. His name was Samuel Brennan, and he was in the right place at the right time.
Mormon alcoholic .
Bigamist, adventurer, alcoholic, and head of the San Francisco Mormon community, Samuel Brennan, among other things, was "famous" for the phrase: "I will give you the Lord's money when you send me a receipt signed by him."
And it was like that. At the height of the gold rush in California, many Mormons came there. Religion obliged them to give God a tenth of what they earned. The Mormon miners brought the tithe of the washed gold to Samuel. And he was obliged to transport him to Utah, to the headquarters of the church. But no parcels of golden sand from California came. When it was hinted to Brennan from Utah that it was not good to embezzle God's money, he answered with the same phrase about the receipt.
Literally intoxicated by the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors embarked on a wild revelry, tried to outdo each other with their unbridledness.
By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day, the discoverer of California gold, James Marshall, came to him - then a modest shepherd and owner of a small store. He had found the gold a couple of months before, but kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid off in Brennan's store with gold dust. And to prove that the gold is real, he confessed where he found it.
The pastor used the situation to his advantage. In the next few days, he bought up all the shovels and other household utensils around the area. And then he published a note in his newspaper that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store was the only one on the road from San Francisco to the mines, which meant that the miners would pay whatever he asked for. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $500, bought by him at $10. For a sieve that cost him $4, he asked for $200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years passed, and he was no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California state senator.
However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, embarrassed to send him a receipt for tithing, found another way to remind him of justice. Several risky financial transactions and a scandalous divorce bankrupted California's first millionaire. He met his old age by sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.
Spending Prospectors
Most of the prospectors ended their lives in much the same way. Even having washed up millions on the rivers of the Yukon, they could not cope with their passions. Saloons, brothels, casinos, the service industry knew how to get money out of their pockets.
The writer Bret Garth, who became famous for describing the life of miners, tells about a man who, having profitably sold his land, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. tubes from five-pound bills (it's like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid cabbies with handfuls of golden sand.
This attack did not bypass Russia either. The gold rush was not as spontaneous as in America, mining was controlled by the state, but still, the income of even hired workers in the gold mines of the Urals and Amur was ten times greater than that of an ordinary peasant. “Intoxicated, literally, by the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors went wild, tried to outdo each other with their unbridledness,” we read from Mamin-Sibiryak in Siberian Tales from the Life of Mining People. - During the usual half-hour afternoon tea, pounds of very expensive tea and huge heads of sugar were thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. Expensive imported clothes and shoes were worn for one day, after which everything was thrown away, being replaced by a new one. A simple peasant put 4 thousand rubles each. on the card and, not in the least embarrassed, lost this amount, which in reality represented for him a whole wealth, on which he could perfectly set his Agriculture and live comfortably for the rest of your life."
Feverish economy
In the essay The Economy of the Klondike, Jack London sums up the gold rush. In two years, 125 thousand people came to the Klondike. Everyone was carrying at least $600 with them. This is $75 million. Jack London also appreciates the work of prospectors. He sets a "fair price" for a workday of $4 per day. The result is this: in order to earn $22 million (and this is the entire price of gold mined in the Klondike), the prospectors spent 225 million. Most of these millions settled in the pockets of enterprising people who knew and understood how to make money on human passions.
Photo of the Klondike and its inhabitants:
Gold prospectors and miners climb the trail through the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush
Dawson was the center of gold mining in Alaska.
