The massive influx of prospectors drove the formation of boom towns along the routes of the stampede, with Dawson City in the Klondike the largest. The new towns were crowded, often chaotic and many disappeared just as soon as they came. Most stampeders were men but women also travelled to the region, typically as the wife of a prospector. Some women entertained in gambling and dance halls built by business men and women who were encouraged by the lavish spending of successful miners. Dawson remained relatively lawful, protected by the Canadian NWMP, which meant that gambling and prostitution were accepted while robbery and murder were kept low. By contrast, especially the port of Skagway under US jurisdiction in Southeast Alaska became infamous for its criminal underworld. The extreme climate and remoteness of the region in general meant that supplies and communication with the outside world including news and mail were scarce.
Boomtowns The ports of Dyea and Skagway, through which most of the prospectors entered, were tiny settlements before the gold rush, Skagway consisting of only a single log cabin, and Dyea comprising a handful of Tlingit houses and the Healy & Wilson trading store. Because there were no
docking facilities, ships had to unload their cargo directly onto the beach, where people tried to move their goods before high tide. Inevitably
cargos were lost in the process. Some travellers had arrived intending to supply goods and services to the would-be miners; some of these in turn, realizing how difficult it would be to reach Dawson, chose to do the same. Within weeks, storehouses, saloons, and offices lined the muddy streets of Dyea and Skagway, surrounded by tents and
hovels. Skagway became famous in international media; the author
John Muir described the town as "a nest of ants taken into a strange country and stirred up by a stick". While Dyea remained a transit point throughout the winter, Skagway began to take on a more permanent character. Skagway also built wharves out into the bay in order to attract a greater share of the prospectors. The town was effectively lawless, dominated by drinking, gunfire and prostitution. The visiting NWMP Superintendent
Sam Steele noted that it was "little better than a hell on earth ... about the roughest place in the world". Nonetheless, by the summer of 1898, with a population—including migrants—of between 15,000 and 20,000, Skagway was the largest city in Alaska. In early 1898 Skagway fell under the control of
Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith and his men, who arrived from Seattle shortly after Skagway began to expand. He was an American
confidence man whose gang, 200 to 300 strong, cheated and stole from the prospectors travelling through the region. He maintained the illusion of being an upstanding member of the community, opening three saloons as well as creating fake businesses to assist in his operations. One of his scams was a fake
telegraph office charging to send messages all over the US and Canada, often pretending to receive a reply. Opposition to Smith steadily grew and, after weeks of
vigilante activity, he was killed in Skagway during the
shootout on Juneau Wharf on July 8, 1898. Other towns also boomed.
Wrangell, port of the Stikine route and boom town from earlier gold rushes, increased in size again, with robberies, gambling and nude female dancing commonplace.
Valdez, formed on the
Gulf of Alaska during the attempt to create the "All-American" route to the Klondike during the winter of 1897–1898, became a tent city of people who stayed behind to supply the ill-fated attempts to reach the interior. Edmonton, Alberta (at that time, the District of Alberta in the Northwest Territories), Canada, increased from a population of 1,200 before the gold rush to 4,000 during 1898. Beyond the immediate region, cities such as San Francisco, Seattle,
Tacoma,
Portland,
Vancouver and Victoria all saw their populations soar as a result of the stampede and the trade it brought along.
Dawson City (upper right), 1899
Dawson City was founded in the early years of the Klondike goldrush, when prospector
Joe Ladue and shopkeeper Arthur Harper decided to make a profit from the influx to the Klondike. The two men bought of the
mudflats at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers from the government and laid out the street plan for a new town, bringing in timber and other supplies to sell to the migrants. The Hän village of
Tr'ochëk along Deer Creek was considered to be too close to the new town, and the NWMP Superintendent
Charles Constantine moved its inhabitants down-river to a small
reserve. The town, in the beginning simply known as "Harper and Ladue town site", was named Dawson City after
the director of Canada's Geographical Survey. It grew rapidly to hold 500 people by the winter of 1896, with plots of land selling for $500 each. In the spring of 1898, the Dawson area population, including the surrounding gold fields, rose further to 30,000 as stampeders arrived over the passes. The centre of the town, Front Street, was lined with hastily built buildings and warehouses, together with log cabins and tents spreading out across the rest of the settlement. There was no running water or sewerage, and only two
springs for drinking water to supplement the increasingly polluted river. In spring, the unpaved streets were churned into thick mud and in summer the settlement reeked of human effluent and was plagued by flies and mosquitoes. Land in Dawson was now scarce, and plots sold for up to $10,000 each; prime locations on Front Street could reach $20,000 while a small log cabin might rent for $100 a month. As a result, Dawson's population spread south into the empty Hän village, renaming it Klondike City. Other communities emerged closer to the mines, such as Granville on Dominion Creek and
Grand Forks on Bonanza Creek. The newly built town proved highly vulnerable to fire. Houses were made of wood, heated with stoves and lit by candles and
oil lamps; water for emergencies was wanting, especially in the frozen winters. The first major fire occurred on November 25, 1897, started accidentally by dance-hall girl Belle Mitchell. She also accidentally started a second major fire on October 14, 1898, which, in the absence of a
fire brigade in Dawson, destroyed two major saloons, the post-office building and the Bank of British North America at a cost of $500,000 . The worst fire occurred on April 26, 1899, when a saloon caught fire in the middle of a
strike by the newly established fire brigade. Most of the major landmarks in the town were burned to the ground: 117 buildings were destroyed, with the damage estimated at over $1 million .
Supply situation The remoteness of Dawson proved an ongoing problem for the supply of food, and as the population grew to 5,000 in 1897, this became critical. When the rivers iced over, it became clear that there would not be enough food for that winter. The NWMP evacuated some prospectors without supplies to
Fort Yukon in Alaska from September 30, 1897 onwards, while others made their way out of the Klondike in search of food and shelter for the winter. Prices remained high in Dawson and supply fluctuated according to the season. During the winter of 1897 salt became worth its weight in gold, while nails, vital for construction work, rose in price to $28 per lb (0.45 kg). Cans of butter sold for $5 each. The only eight horses in Dawson were slaughtered for dog food as they could not be kept alive over the winter. The first fresh goods arriving in the spring of 1898 sold for record prices, eggs reaching $3 each and apples $1 .
Illness Scurvy, a potentially fatal illness caused by the lack of vitamin C, became a problem, particularly during the winter where fresh food was unavailable. English prospectors gave it the telling name of "Canadian black leg". It struck, among others, writer Jack London and, although not fatal in his case, brought an end to his mining career.
Dysentery and
malaria were also common in Dawson, and an epidemic of
typhoid broke out in July and ran rampant throughout the summer. Up to 140 patients were taken into the newly constructed St Mary's Hospital and thousands were affected. Measures were taken by the following year to prevent further outbreaks, including the introduction of better sewage management and the piping in of water from further upstream. These gave improvements in 1899, although typhoid remained a problem. The new Hän reserve, however, lay downstream from Dawson City, and here the badly contaminated river continued to contribute to epidemics of typhoid and
diphtheria throughout the gold rush.
Conspicuous consumption Despite these challenges, the huge quantities of gold coming through Dawson City encouraged a lavish lifestyle amongst the richer prospectors. Saloons were typically open 24 hours a day, with whiskey the standard drink. Gambling was popular, with the major saloons each running their own rooms; a culture of high stakes evolved, with rich prospectors routinely betting $1,000 at
dice or playing for a $5,000
poker pot. The establishments around Front Street had grand façades in a
Parisian style, mirrors and plate-glass windows and, from late 1898, were lit by electric light. The dance halls in Dawson were particularly prestigious and major status symbols, both for customers and their owners. Wealthy prospectors were expected to drink
champagne at $60 a bottle, and the Pavilion dancehall cost its owner, Charlie Kimball, as much as $100,000 to construct and decorate. Elaborate opera houses were built, bringing singers and specialty acts to Dawson. Tales abounded of prospectors spending huge sums on entertainment — Jimmy McMahon once spent $28,000 in a single evening, for example. Most payments were made in gold dust and in places like saloons, there was so much spilled gold that a profit could be made just by sweeping the floor. Some of the richest prospectors lived flamboyantly in Dawson.
Swiftwater Bill, a gambler who rarely went anywhere without wearing silk and diamonds, was one of them. When he discovered the woman he was in love with (who liked eggs, an expensive luxury) was dining with another man, he allegedly bought all the eggs in Dawson, had them boiled and fed them to dogs. Another miner, Frank Conrad, threw a sequence of gold objects onto a ship as tokens of his esteem when his favourite singer left Dawson City. The wealthiest dance-hall girls followed suit: Daisy D'Avara had a belt made for herself from $340 in gold dollar coins; another, Gertie Lovejoy, had a diamond inserted between her two front teeth. The miner and businessman Alex McDonald, despite being styled the "King of the Klondike", was unusual amongst his peers for his lack of grandiose spending.
Law and order Unlike its American equivalents, Dawson City was a law-abiding town. By 1897, 96 members of the
NWMP had been sent to the district and by 1898, this had increased to 288, an expensive commitment by the Canadian government. By June 1898, the force was headed by Colonel
Sam Steele, an officer with a reputation for firm discipline. In 1898, there were no murders and only a few major thefts; in all, only about 150 arrests were made in the Yukon for serious offences that year. Of these arrests, over half were for prostitution and resulted from an attempt by the NWMP to regulate the sex industry in Dawson: regular monthly arrests, $50 fines and medical inspections were imposed, with the proceeds being used to fund the local hospitals. The so-called
blue laws were strictly enforced. Saloons and other establishments closed promptly at midnight on Saturday, and anyone caught working on Sunday was liable to be fined or set to chopping firewood for the NWMP. The NWMP are generally regarded by historians to have been an efficient and honest force during the period, although their task was helped by the geography of the Klondike which made it relatively easy to bar entry to undesirables or prevent suspects from leaving the region. In contrast to the NWMP, the early civil authorities were criticized by the prospectors for being inept and potentially corrupt. Thomas Fawcett was the gold commissioner and temporary head of the Klondike administration at the start of the gold rush; he was accused of keeping the details of new claims secret and allowing what historian Kathryn Winslow termed "carelessness, ignorance and partiality" to reign in the mine recorder's office. Following campaigns against him by prospectors, who were backed by the local press, Fawcett was relieved by the Canadian government. His successor, Major
James Morrow Walsh, was considered a stronger character and arrived in May 1898, but fell ill and returned east in July. It was left to his replacement, William Ogilvie, supported by a
Royal Commission, to conduct reforms. The Commission, in lack of evidence, cleared Fawcett of all charges, which meant that he was not punished further than being relieved. Ogilvie proved a much stronger administrator and subsequently revisited many of the mining surveys of his predecessors.
News and mail In the remote Klondike, there was great demand for news and contact with the world outside. During the first months of the stampede in 1897, it was said that no news was too old to be read. In the lack of newspapers, some prospectors would read can labels until they knew them by heart. The following year, two teams fought their way over the passes to reach Dawson City first, complete with
printing-presses, with the aim of gaining control of the newspaper market. Gene Kelly, the editor of the
Klondike Nugget arrived first, but without his equipment, and it was the team behind the
Midnight Sun who produced the first daily newspaper in Dawson. The
Dawson Miner followed shortly after, bringing the number of daily newspapers in the town during the gold rush up to three. The
Nugget sold for $24 as an annual subscription, and became well known for championing miners and for its lucid coverage of scandals. Paper was often hard to find and during the winter of 1898–99, the
Nugget had to be printed on butcher's wrapping paper. News could also be told. In June, 1898, a prospector bought an edition of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer at an auction and charged spectators a dollar each to have it read aloud in one of Dawson's halls. Mail service was chaotic during the stampede. Apart from the number of prospectors, two major obstacles stood in its way. To begin with, any mail from America to Dawson City was sent to Juneau in South-east Alaska before being sent through Dawson and then down the Yukon to Circle City. From here it was then distributed by the
US Post Office back up to Dawson. The huge distances involved resulted in delays of several months and frequently the loss of protective envelopes and their addresses. The second problem was in Dawson itself, which initially lacked a post office and therefore relied on two stores and a saloon to act as informal delivery points. The NWMP were tasked to run the mail system by October 1897, but they were ill-trained to do so. Up to 5,700 letters might arrive in a single shipment, all of which had to be collected in person from the post office. This resulted in huge queues, with claimants lining up outside the office for up to three days. Those who had no time and could afford it would pay others to stand in line for them, preferably a woman since they were allowed to get ahead in line out of politeness. Postage stamps, like paper in general, were scarce and rationed to two per customer. By 1899, trained postal staff took over mail delivery and relieved the NWMP of this task.
Role of women In 1898 eight percent of those living in the Klondike territory were women, and in towns like Dawson this rose to 12 percent. Many women arrived with their husbands or families, but others travelled alone. Most came to the Klondike for similar economic and social reasons as male prospectors, but they attracted particular media interest. The gender imbalance in the Klondike encouraged business proposals to ship young, single women into the region to marry newly wealthy miners; few, if any, of these marriages ever took place, but some single women appear to have travelled on their own in the hope of finding prosperous husbands. Guidebooks gave recommendations for what practical clothes women should take to the Klondike: the female dress code of the time was formal, emphasizing long skirts and
corsets, but most women adapted this for the conditions of the trails. Regardless of experience, women in a party were typically expected to cook for the group. Few mothers brought their children with them due to the risks of the travel. Once in the Klondike, very few women—less than one percent—actually worked as miners. Many were married to miners; however, their lives as partners on the gold fields were still hard and often lonely. They had extensive domestic duties, including thawing ice and snow for water, breaking up frozen food, chopping wood and collecting wild foods. In Dawson and other towns, some women took in laundry to make money. This was a physically demanding job but could be relatively easily combined with child care duties. Others took jobs in the service industry, for example as waitresses or seamstresses, which could pay well, but were often punctuated by periods of unemployment. Both men and women opened
roadhouses, but women were considered to be better at running them. A few women worked in the packing trade, carrying goods on their backs, or became domestic servants. in the Klondike Wealthier women with capital might invest in mines and other businesses. One of the most prominent businesswomen in the Klondike was
Belinda Mulrooney. She brought a consignment of cloth and hot water bottles with her when she arrived in the Klondike in early 1897, and with the proceeds of those sales she first built
a roadhouse at Grand Forks and later a grand hotel in Dawson. She invested widely, including acquiring her own mining company, and was reputed to be the richest woman of the Klondike. The wealthy
Martha Black was abandoned by her husband early in the journey to the Klondike but continued on without him, reaching Dawson City where she became a prominent citizen, investing in various mining and business ventures with her brother. A relatively small number of women worked in the entertainment and
sex industries. The
elite of these women were the highly paid actresses and courtesans of Dawson; beneath them were
chorus line dancers, who usually doubled as hostesses and other dance hall workers. While still better paid than white-collar male workers, these women worked very long hours and had significant expenses. The entertainment industry merged into the sex industry, where women made a living as prostitutes. The sex industry in the Klondike was concentrated in Klondike City and in a backstreet area of Dawson. A hierarchy of sexual employment existed, with brothels and parlour houses at the top, small independent "cigar shops" in the middle, and, at the bottom, the prostitutes who worked out of small huts called "hutches". Life for these workers was a continual struggle and the suicide rate was high. The degree of involvement between Indigenous women and the stampeders varied. Many Tlingit women worked as packers for the prospectors, for example, carrying supplies and equipment, sometimes also transporting their babies as well. Hän women had relatively little contact with the white immigrants, however, and there was a significant social divide between local Hän women and white women. Although before 1897 there had been a number of Indigenous women who married western men, including Kate Carmack, the Tagish wife of one of the discoverers, this practice did not survive into the stampede. Very few stampeders married Hän women, and very few Hän women worked as prostitutes. "Respectable" white women would avoid associating with Indigenous women or prostitutes: those who did risked scandal.
Recreation Baseball was the national pastime during the Klondike era and was a significant aspect of social life in Boomtowns. Whalers, goldrush stampeders and the first soldiers deployed as border patrol brought the game of baseball with them to Alaska. The first baseball games played in the region occurred on
Herschel Island off the Yukon's Arctic Coast in December 1893 in the Arctic Whalemen’s Pennant. As early as 1900, Skagway, Alaska had three teams representing railroaders, soldiers and juniors. Teams representing cities (Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka), villages (Metlakatla, Hydaburg), Alaska Native organizations (Alaska Native Brotherhood, Auk Tlingit) and mining companies (Treadwell, Alaska Juneau) were formed up and down the coast. == End of the gold rush ==