The melting of the snow was a welcome sight for men who had taken a boat from Seattle, landed in Alaska and were about to cross into Canada via the Chilkoot Pass on April 3, 1898
They were a few of the tens of thousands of men that ventured into the northern country to find their fortune.
Prospectors making the perilous and arduous journey which included surviving a long journey on foot, escaping being robbed or killed, contending the 1.1-kilometre-high route through the Chilkoot Pass and finally 600 kilometres of raging river to get into Dawson City.
As they say, there be gold in them hills… and for those willing to risk it all it was worth it.
Sadly, the men attempting the cross into the goldfields that April their dreams of striking it rich would be buried in snow as an avalanche claimed them.
But others were lucky and for three years between 1896 and 1899 the Klondike region of Yukon became the epicenter of tragedy, and triumphs in the face of adversity.
A place where characters larger than life could thrive.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we’re digging for treasure in the Klondike Gold Rush!
Long before humans ever set foot in the Klondike, gold twinkled in the river waters.
The Han and Dene people lived for centuries with it but saw little value in it.
Copper was much more valuable.
It was mine throughout the present-day Yukon and traded with other Indigenous Nations.
When the first Europeans arrived, they were fur traders and explorers from the Hudson’s Bay Company and Russia more concerned with furs than gold.
They ignored the rumours of gold until the late-19th century when American prospectors began to make their way north from California to the Fraser Valley and finally the Klondike.
The first group arrived in 1870 and for the next 20 years, gold seekers slowly trickled in.
The Klondike, was the best kept secret until routes through the Chilkoot and White Passes, allowed access from the coast to Yukon’s interior.
As prospectors slowly made their north, in 1883, Ed Schieffelin struck gold at Fortymile River, 40 kilometres northwest of present-day Dawson City.
Two years later, gold was found on the Stewart River, 70 kilometres south of Dawson City. Small gold strikes occurred in 1891 and 1892.
Each time gold was discovered, closer and closer to Dawson City.
By 1892, there were 1,600 prospectors in the Yukon River basin, which both the Stewart and Fortymile Rivers flow into.
Among those prospectors were four individuals, panning for gold on Rabbit Creek and they discovered changed Canadian history.
Shaaw Tláa, also known as Kate, was born in the Yukon in 1862.
Her father was the head of the Tlingit crow clan, and her mother was a member of the Tagish wolf clan.
Shaaw Tláa grew up, got married, and a few years later tragedy struck when both her husband and daughter died of influenza.
Now a widow, she met George Carmack, an American, and former Marine that deserted his post in 1882 to care for his sick sister.
Three years later he moved to Alaska to begin trading, fishing, and trapping.
That’s where his path crossed Shaaw Tláa and they entered into a common-law marriage in 1887.
For the next nine years, the couple and her brother Keish, prospected in the Klondike area.
Keish was well-known and was called Skookum Jim by locals, which came from Chinook slang that referred to his strength and reliability in packing goods for expeditions.
George said he was,
“Straight as a gun barrel, powerfully built with strong sloping shoulders, tapering towards to the waist, like a keystone. He was known as the best hunter and trapper on the river.”
Meanwhile George wasn’t as well-liked because other prospectors didn’t want him associating with Indigenous people, or the exaggerated stories of his mining success he often told.
In 1893, the couple had a daughter, Graphie Grace Carmack, and in a few years Kaa Goox, Keish and Shaaw Tláa’s nephew joined the growing prospecting family.
On Aug. 16, 1896, the four were traveling along Rabbit Creek when they stopped to rest.
While sitting and enjoying the warm summer sun, one of them noticed something shiny on the ground.
Gold
And soon they noticed it was a small speck amid a bonanza waiting to be claimed/.
Who first found the gold is lost to history.
Evidence points to Keish, or Shaaw Tláa but officially records list George because he filed a claim in his name.
Which makes sense because Keish and Shaaw Tláa were Indigenous, and there was likely a worry that authorities would not recognize their claim.
Regardless, George Carmack measured out four claims, took two for himself, gave one to Keish and one to Kaa.
The next day, Aug. 17, 1896, the claims were officially filed at a police post along Fortymile River.
And the second that happened word spread Within two weeks all of Rabbit Creek, soon to be renamed Bonanza Creek, was claimed by other prospectors and then claims spread to another stream later named Eldorado Creek because of its treasures.
In that small area of the Yukon, the news may have spread quickly, but it reached the outside world at a snail’s pace.
There was no social media to announce the gold strikes back then.
No #KlondikeGold.
Consequently, very few people outside the local prospecting community knew about the gold.
Winter set in, and prospectors hunkered down on their gold claims, mining as much as they could.
As the spring thaw came, new millionaires finally left the Klondike.
And with them news of immeasurable treasures.
Spring broke up the ice and the prospectors left the Yukon with their pockets stuffed with gold.
Most travelled south to the United States on two ships: the Excelsior and the Portland.
On July 14, the Excelsior docked in San Francisco, followed a day later by the Portland which in Seattle.
On board these two ships were 68 men who had spent the winter mining and they carried $1.1 million in gold.
Their arrival sparked a frenzy as news of Klondike gold fields went viral.
Almost immediately, Seattle lost its mayor, W.D. Wood, when he resigned his post and formed a company to transport prospectors to the Klondike.
Men quit their jobs.
Police officers and preachers resigned from their posts.
Business owners closed their establishments and left on the first steamers for the Yukon.
Those who stayed took advantage of the Klondike Fever by offering sales on products for would-be prospectors regardless of those items being helpful in finding gold.
Even children dropped everything to join the rush. At one point, 10 boys were reported missing in one day, only to be found down at the docks waiting for their opportunity to leave the city and find their fortune.
It did not take long for news to spread further out from Seattle and San Francisco.
Across North America newspapers reported millionaires who found their fortunes in the Klondike.
From the Pacific to the Atlantic, people heard of this mythical place and saw an opportunity to become rich.
Why was the draw so strong?
At the time, North America, especially the United States, was going through an economic recession that began in 1893 and was made worse with the Panic of 1896 caused by a drop in silver reserves and concerns over the gold standard.
The stock market fell to new lows, and millions of people had limited funds and even more limited prospects.
You can’t blame so many people for having gold fever.
Those who wanted to strike it rich, heard the news of the gold fields and the first words out of their mouths was likely “where is the Klondike?”
When they got the chance to look at a map, they would ask “how do we get there?”
They had three main options.
The very expensive dangerous route.
The very long dangerous route.
The very difficult and dangerous route.
On July 19, the first ship left for the Klondike.
Just how would they get to the promised land?
In 1897, the Klondike could only be reached via the Yukon River.
No matter how you made your way north, once you arrived in Alaska you were going on the river at some point.
If you had the money, you would take the All-Water Route from Seattle to t St. Michael, Alaska located along the Yukon River Delta.
Once there you would board a riverboat that took you to Dawson City.
This route was relatively easy, as there was no difficult overland travel.
It was also very expensive.
Tickets for the route, at the start of the Klondike Stampede, were $150, or $4,000 today.
Within a few months, the cost skyrocketed to $1,000, or $27,000 today.
It was easier but not without danger. Winters arrived quickly t and anyone taking this route could find their transportation frozen in ice.
During the first year of the gold rush 1,800 prospectors took this route.
Nearly all of them got stuck on the Yukon River when the ice froze in October.
Only 43 made it out of the area before winter set in.
That was the expensive route.
Next was the very long dangerous route or the All-Canadian Route.
If you are like me and the idea of being on a boat is deeply terrifying, well you could go overland!
Through interior BC, you just needed to go up gorges, through mountains and across swamps.
Of the 1,500 prospectors who made this journey, only a dozen or so actually succeeded.
The other three All-Canadian Routes went through Edmonton, then just a small community along the North Saskatchewan River.
To make this journey you had to travel northeast on foot from Edmonton, across the Peace River and into British Columbia. Then, you journeyed into the Yukon where you could take the Pelly River system to the Yukon River and into Dawson City.
This was marketed as the “Back door to the Yukon” and the inside track to get there before anyone else.
Promoters of this route left out the fact it was a 1,900-kilometre journey on foot that took 18 months to complete.
Of the 1,660 prospectors who took this route, only 685 made it to Dawson City.
If you didn’t want to take the expensive route, or the long route, you could take the most difficult and dangerous route.
The Dyea-Skagway Route.
The most common, most direct, and cheapest option was also the most dangerous.
To take The Dyea-Skagway Route, prospectors booked passage from Seattle on a ship.
At the start of the rush, the cost of a cabin was $40.
That price soon went up to $100 per cabin.
Eventually, steamship companies stopped posting their rates in advance because the price went up daily.
Once passage was booked, the ship traveled up the British Columbia coast to dock at either Dyea or Skagway, Alaska.
Of the two, Skagway was the more common destination to get off the ship and begin the journey into the Klondike…at least at first.
How can I describe Skagway during the Klondike Gold Rush?
To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, when referring to Mos Eisley spaceport it was a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
John Muir, the famous naturalist, wrote about it as,
“a nest of ants taken into a strange country and stirred up by a stick.”
Crime was rampant and Sir Sam Steele, the famous North-West Mounted Police officer called it little better than a hell on Earth.
The ruler of that Hell was Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith.
Much like the Joker in Gotham
Soapy and his group of criminal misfits ran the show.
They arrived in the community just as it was beginning to expand and his gang of 200 men quickly took control.
The deputy US Marshal was on Soapy’s payroll, which gave him the ability to do what he wanted.
As prospectors stepped off the boat, they were greeted by a member of Soapy’s gang pretending to be clergy, local business owners and newspaper reporters and they offered their help.
New arrivals were steered by Soapy’s men to fake shipping companies, as well as Soapy’s hotels and gambling den.
Then, they were given cheap alcohol and left to gamble their money away or be robbed outright in their rooms.
One of Soapy’s most famous scams involved a telegraph office.
He set up the telegraph office so new arrivals could send messages back home for a small fee.
Everything looked legit, and a wire went from the telegraph to the outside of the building.
And that is where it stopped.
No message ever left Skagway because the telegraph didn’t arrive until 1901.
Soapy ran his little empire out of the Jeff Smith Parlor which was unofficially known as the “real city hall” of Skagway.
Eventually, the people of Skagway got fed up with their mini-dictator, and he was shot in the street on July 8, 1898.
If prospectors survived Soapy’s many schemes with their possessions and wallet still intact, they took the White Pass Trail.
Also known as the Dead Horse Trail because of the number of horses that died along the route.
It began with a gentle slope before it reached the mountains where some paths were only two feet wide, with a sheer drop on one side.
The route was considered so dangerous that in late-1897, it was closed, leaving 5,000 prospectors stuck in Skagway.
If a prospector disembarked from their ship in Dyea, they took the most famous route of all, the Chilkoot Trail.
Prospectors on this journey would pass various camps along the Chilkoot Trail, until they arrived at a flat ledge just before the main ascent up the Chilkoot Pass.
The Chilkoot Pass is the highest point between Dyea, Alaska and Bennett Lake, British Columbia.
For centuries, it was used by the Tlingit people for trade.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, an estimated 22,000 people used the pass to get to Dawson City.
The pass was too steep for pack animals, so prospectors had to haul their goods up the mountain.
Supplies were broken down into manageable packs, and carried up on a journey that could take most of the day.
Then it was back down the mountain to gather supplies as camp before journeying back up the mountain to return for more supplies.
Over and over.
For as many as 20 trips depending on how many supplies a prospector had.
If a prospector had money, they could pay someone one dollar per pound to haul their goods up the mountain. Most of these packers were the local Tagish and Tlingit people.
Tappan Adney, a writer for Harpers Weekly, wrote of the pass,
“There is nothing but the grey wall of rock and earth. But stop. Look more closely. The mountain is alive. There is a continual moving train. They are perceptible only by their movement, just as ants are. They are human beings, but never did men look so small. It is impossible to give one an idea of the slowness with which things are moving. It takes a day to go four or five miles and back. It takes a dollar to do what ten cents would do at home.”
Eventually, capitalism made things easier.
Entrepreneurs carved 1,500 steps into the mountainside that could be used for a small fee.
By December 1897, tramways were built, and goods could be hauled up for eight to 30 cents per pound.
During the winter and early spring, the Chilkoot Pass was especially dangerous.
Melting snow triggered avalanches, including the avalanche on April 3, 1898 I mentioned at the beginning of this episode which killed 65 people.
Duncan Clark, a farm boy from Iowa, saw the avalanches that day and stated,
“It was a horrible sight to see. Big robust men, the very picture of health, dug from the snow, put on a sled, and hauled to the morgue. Forty were dead from the first day, my brother John among the number.”
In February 1898, anyone entering Canada had to have one ton of goods with them, and enough food to survive a winter. This was enforced by the North-West Mounted Police,
The NWMP operated posts at all points of entry into the Yukon, equipped with Maxim guns, they enforced the rules on food supply, checked for illegal weapons, and prevented known criminals from entering.
Once a prospector made the long journey over the pass, they had to tackle the Yukon River.
Like I said earlier you couldn’t escape it and for those on the difficult dangerous route the 600-kilometre journey to Dawson City on the river began at Bennett Lake where prospectors could stop at the Arctic restaurant run by a German American named Friedrich Trump.
Along with his restaurant, he operated a hotel and brothel. He was able to make a small fortune off those waiting to journey down the river.
Later, when the Skagway to Whitehorse Railroad bypassed Bennett Lake, Trump dismantled his restaurant and moved it to Whitehorse where he opened a larger restaurant and hotel.
He continued offering food, drinks, gambling and more.
Eventually he left the Yukon and found his way back to the United States.
And yes, his grandson became President.
While Trump took their money, early prospectors built their own boats to navigate the river.
It didn’t take long for the surrounding area to be cleared. In May 1898 alone, 7,124 boats left Lake Bennett and Lake Lindeman to travel on the Yukon River.
Many of the boats used I wouldn’t trust in a pool let alone on a raging river with plenty of rapids.
After dozens died on the river, the North-West Mounted Police required boats to be inspected and have a licenced pilot.
If the prospectors survived all of those pitfalls… their final destination and the riches that surrounded her awaited.
Dawson City.
Of the 100,000 people who set out to find their fortune, only 30,000 reached her shore.
They could count themselves among the minority because Dawson City was unlike any place they had seen before.
Founded in 1897 by American Joseph Ladue, it was named for the director of Canada’s Geographic Survey, George Mercer Dawson.
In the winter of 1896, 500 people lived in the settlement by the end of 1897, the population was 5,000 and growing.
As the first prospectors arrived in the autumn they found no sewer system, telegraph or running water.
There was no sewer system, so the Yukon River quickly became polluted, leaving only two natural springs as sources of drinking water.
New arrivals who didn’t prospect for gold invested in real estate and quickly made a fortune.
Within months, lots were selling for $10,000 to $20,000 each. It wasn’t unusual for a small log cabin to sell for $100 as a housing crisis became worse each day.
It didn’t take long for some residents to figure out that you could make a fortune off the gold-seekers, instead of mining.
One couple made $30,000 during the winter in Dawson City just selling coffee and pies.
Two entrepreneurs, Edith Van Buren and Mary Hitchcock set up a large white circus tent on one city block.
Inside, prospectors found a bowling alley, soda machine, and a place to relax while being served with fine China and silver.
In the winter of 1897, food supplies were scarce, the simplest meal could cost a small fortune.
Salt was worth its weight in gold, and nails sold for $28 per pound.
A can of butter cost five dollars a tin, and eggs were three dollars each.
Hotels offered a basic meal for one dollar, a square meal for two dollars and a belt buster for three dollars.
If a prospector was looking for a place to stay, most hotels advertised beds for two dollars but if you wanted clean sheets that was extra.
With so many buildings popping up in a short amount of time, building codes were mostly ignored.
The first major fire hit Dawson City on Nov. 25, 1897, when Belle Mitchell, a dance hall girl, accidentally knocked over a lamp and destroyed a building.
Less than a year later, Belle Mitchell threw a lit lamp at another woman.
The lamp broke and the fire spread quickly destroying two saloons, a post office, and the Bank of British North America, causing $500,000 in damages.
The worst fire occurred on April 26, 1899, when a saloon caught fire and spread. The fire brigade was on strike and 117 buildings were destroyed.
Amid the high food prices, lack of accommodation and occasional fires, there was money being thrown around.
Prospectors who struck it rich could drop $1,000 on a dice game or throw $5,000 on a poker bet.
Jimmy McMahon, a wealthy prospector, was rumoured to have spent $28,000 in a single evening in the city.
With so much money flowing saloon owners made small fortunes just sweeping up gold dust off the floor at the end of the evening.
Opera houses were quickly built and singers from across North America were brought in to entertain the newly rich population making Dawson City known as the Paris of the North. Millionaires roamed the streets and the poor who could not catch a break.
It was the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg. Tappen Adney of Harper’s Weekly described is as quote.
“It is a motley throng. Every degree of person gathered from every corner of the Earth. Australians with upturned sleeves and swagger. Young Englishmen in golf stockings and tweeds. Would be miners in macanaws and rubber boots and women too, everywhere. It is a vast herd. They crowd the boats and fill the streets.”
New arrivals were called Cheechako and after a year they could call themselves a Sourdough.
A Cheechako who didn’t stay long enough to become a Sourdough was 21-year-old Jack London.
He arrived in Dawson City in 1897 after trying and failing as a worker in a cannery, an oyster pirate, a sealer, and a bit of time as a protester for labour rights.
In the Yukon he truly found his path.
During the harsh winter of 1897 he developed scurvy, and it was only through the help of Father William Judge that he survived.
His struggles inspired him to write a short story, titled To Build a Fire, released in 1902.
Seeing others work to make a small living in the Klondike, he focused on being a writer but left the Yukon less than a year later in 1898.
Inspired by his time there, five years later, he wrote what is considered his masterpiece, The Call of the Wild. It is a short adventure novel published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. In 2020 it became a film starring Harrison Ford. Another notable man was Frank Berton. He arrived as Jack London was leaving in 1898 and initially looked to prospect for gold.
When he saw that most of the good claims were gone, he found work as a teacher and clerk in the gold commissioner office.
In 1907 he met Laura Thompson, the two fell in love and married.
In 1920, their first son, Pierre Berton, was born and he became a Canadian writer, journalist and broadcaster. He also may have inspired a little podcaster named Craig Baird and
You can learn all about his life in an episode from November 2023.
With all of the prospectors which were mostly men arriving on Dawson City shores as you can imagine only 12 per cent of the population were women.
While some worked as miners, others worked packing supplies, as servers, and seamstresses.
But a few made fortunes themselves.
When Belinda Mulrooney arrived in the Klondike in 1897, she brought cloth and hot water bottles…. then sold them s and used the money to buy a roadhouse.
With the profits she made she built a grand hotel and continued to invest money, soon she was the richest woman in the Klondike.
Another notable woman was Martha Black who was abandoned by her husband while pregnant on her way to the Klondike. She continued on the journey.
Upon reaching Dawson, she invested her money in mining and business ventures. She became wealthy and married George Black, an administrator and politician in Yukon.
In 1935, Martha was elected to the House of Commons, becoming the second woman ever elected to Parliament.
Other women made a lot of money as dance hall workers and chorus line dancers and as you can imagine there was a prominent sex industry in Dawson City.
While some sex workers worked out of brothels and saloons, others were independent and worked out of small huts.
Sex work was tolerated, although occasionally brothels received fines that were then given to the local hospital fund.
And Dawson City was one of the safest places in the Canadian North thanks to the arrival of the North-West Mounted Police late in 1897.
A year later there were no murders in the city and only 150 total arrests. Americans out-numbered Canadians five-to-one in Dawson City. At first, they pushed against the rules of the North-West Mounted Police, which included no guns, but in the end, many came to accept the force as a good thing as it kept crime down.
One of those Mounties who prevented the same lawlessness seen at hands of Soapy Smith in Skag from occurring in the Klondike was Sam Steele.
Amid the wild parties at opera houses and saloons, and money being spent like there was no tomorrow, there were also small moments of kindness in Dawson City,
The birth of a child was a rare occurrence and for miners who missed their families, a baby was a cause of celebration.
New mothers could expect to receive food and gold nuggets. One unnamed woman said,
“Even the roughest looking of the miners wanted to hold my baby, to see his toes and to feel his tiny fingers curl in their rough hands.”
Like sands through the hourglass, our lives flow away swiftly and inexorably as time passes…
Nothing lasts forever, and the Klondike Gold Rush was no different.
Those that arrived late were forced to stake claims farther away from the gold fields.
During the height of the Gold Rush in July 1898, 10,000 claims were staked and very few ever produced much more than a couple ounces of gold.
Gold was unevenly distributed in the area, making it hard to predict where good mining sites were located.
One gold claim could be a bonanza of riches, while the one right next to it, only 100 feet away, had nothing.
In 1898, work on the White Pass and Yukon Railway started at Skagway and was completed in 1900, making the trip to the Yukon much easier.
By then, the Gold Rush was on its last legs as Klondikers left Dawson City in droves.
Those who failed to find fortune went to Nome, Alaska after gold was discovered there in September 1898.
In a single week in August 1899, an estimated 5,000 people left from Dawson.
By 1900 the population had fallen from a high of 20,000 in 1898, to 8,000.
The phrase, “ah go to the Klondike!” became a phrase of disgust uttered when you wanted someone to get out of your face.
Of the 100,000 who ventured out for the Klondike, and the 30,000 who made it to Dawson City, only 15,000 became prospectors.
Of those, 4,000 struck gold and only a few hundred, mostly those who staked claims in 1896, became rich.
In all, between 1897 and 1899, $29 million in gold was mined out of the Yukon.
For the Indigenous of the region, the Klondike Gold Rush was devastating.
While some prospered briefly as packers and guides, the environmental damage caused to the rivers and forests was considerable.
After the gold rush had come and gone, fishing and hunting grounds were left destroyed, and by 1904, they needed aid and rations from the North-West Mounted Police to prevent famine.
Some found fortunes in the Klondike while others didn’t know when to quit.
Alex McDonald made a fortune as a prospector, but he didn’t see the writing on the wall as the Klondike Gold Rush petered out. He kept buying up land, and by the end of his life, he was deeply in debt and living in poverty.
Antoine Stander found gold at Eldorado early in the gold rush and became the fourth richest man in the Klondike for a time. He spent most of his fortune on having a good time and by the time he left the Yukon, he was working in a ship’s kitchen.
Gene Allen arrived in the Klondike and started a newspaper in Dawson City. He made a small fortune, then lost all of it and spent the rest of his life working at small newspapers.
Sam Bonnifield was another prospector who made a fortune, then gambled it all away. He eventually had a nervous breakdown and died in poverty.
But what happened to George Carmack and Shaaw Tláa the family that started it all?
They got out early and took their wealth to Modesto, California where they bought a ranch.
Within a year George abandoned Shaaw Tláa and married another woman, Marguerite.
He lived in a 12-room mansion with his new wife and spent his life looking for more gold while living in luxury.
He staked various claims but never found anything to rival the discovery at Bonanza Creek. He died in 1922 in Seattle. Mount Carmack in Alaska is named for him.
Shaaw Tláa tried to get a portion of the money she and George mined together but since she was a common-law wife, she was deemed ineligible to receive anything.
She returned to the Yukon where her brother Keish built her a cabin. She lived there until her death from the Spanish Flu in 1920.
Kiesh built a large house where he lived during the winters. He became known for his generosity, and he used his money to create the Daisy Mason Trust. This allowed for his fortune to be given to his daughter, Daisy, for her education and adult life.
He died on July 11, 1916, from a long illness. In his will, he ensured money was left to several relatives When his daughter died in 1938, as per Keish’s instructions, the remaining money in the trust was used to help the Indigenous Peoples of the Yukon who had suffered during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Eventually, George Carmack, Keish and Shaaw Tláa were inducted into Canada’s Mining Hall of Fame. Keish and George were inducted in the 1990s. Shaaw Tláa was honoured two decades later.
Kaa Goox adopted the name Charles Henderson in 1901 and spent the money he earned from his claim at a very high rate. He died in 1908 when he fell off the White Pass Railway Bridge.
As for Dawson City, it lost most of its population, but it never quite disappeared.
By 1907, many of the buildings were deserted. By 1912, only 2,000 people remained.
In 1972, 500 people were living in the city, but rebounded in the 1970s thanks to tourism. There are now 1,200 people living there.
Tourism and the celebration of the Klondike remain a strong heritage in the city to this day.
Gold mining continues in the region, but nothing to the scale that was once seen. By 2005, it is estimated 1.25 million pounds of gold had been recovered from the Klondike over the past century.
Before I leave you, I want to talk about an amazing woman named Lucille Hunter.
Lucille Hunter was born sometime between 1874 and 1882 in the United States. It is possible that her parents were formerly enslaved individuals.
At some point, she married her husband Charles, and in 1897 they moved to the Klondike by taking the difficult Dead Horse Trail route.
At the time, Lucille was pregnant and gave birth to her daughter Teslin named for Teslin Lake, where she was born.
Instead of staying at the lake for the winter, Lucille, Charles, and Teslin continued by dogsled towards Dawson City.
The couple arrived ahead of many in Dawson City and staked three claims on Bonanza Creek.
To make extra money, they opened a restaurant in the city.
Lucille and Charles never left.
Teslin died in 1925, and Charles died in 1939.
Lucille continued to prospect the gold fields, walking 230 kilometres on foot from Mayo to Dawson City to check her claims through the years.
In 1942, she became blind and moved to Whitehorse to open a laundry business.
Her only relative at this time was her grandson, Carl Leo “Buster” Sorenson.
He made the deliveries for the laundry business.
Her home was destroyed by fire years later and that’s when she moved to a basement apartment until she broke her hip and moved toa hospital in Whitehorse, where she died on June 10, 1972, at the age of between 90 to 98.
Before she died, the Yukon Order of Pioneers gave her an honorary membership. She was the first woman given the honour and was buried in the Yukon Order of Pioneers section of the Yukon Grey Mountain Cemetery in Whitehorse.
Information comes from Wikipedia, Canadian Encyclopedia, DawsonCity.ca, CanadaHistoryProject.ca, Pier 21, CBC.ca, Gold Fields of The Yukon And How to Get There, Pat Burns Cattle King, History.com,
