Kate Rockwell found a special way to make a fortune in the Klondike. A gorgeous, red-haired chorus girl from New York, Kate heard about the Klondike in 1899, three years after the famous gold strike. She headed north, determined to become the “Belle of the Yukon”. Link to another story “The Bride of the Klondike” …
Category Archives: Klondike
The Richest Woman in the Klondike
The Richest woman in the Klondike? Magazine and newspaper writers created the legend of Belinda Mulrooney because they loved to write about her. Belinda explained that nothing much happened in Dawson to write about and they needed copy. Link to another story “The Bride of the Klondike” When Belinda, as a child, immigrated from Ireland. …
Bessie Gideon—the Most Persistent Ghost
Bessie Gideon refused to let mere death end her career at the Caribou Hotel. Her husband Edwin died in 1925 and never came back. Bessie died in 1933 and never left. Her friends and neighbors gave her a funeral and buried her in Carcross—but no one knows the location of her grave. Ghosts Haunt the …
First Woman of the Klondike
The first woman of the Klondike struck gold in the Klondike, but still lived the saddest life on record. Born Shaaw Tiaa, native Tagish, she married a Tlingit man and bore him a daughter. A flu epidemic killed them both. When Shaaw Tiaa’s sister passed away she married the widower, a white man named George …
Women Came to the Klondike Too
Jack London Found a Different Kind of Klondike Gold Women as well as men heard the news of gold in the Klondike. If men endured hell to get there, women did too. With husbands or without them, miners or miner miners, women came north in droves. Some came out of desperation, hoping for money …
Jack London Found a Different Kind of Klondike Gold
Jack London found a different kind of gold in the Klondike. Leaving frustrated poverty behind in Oakland, California, he sailed north with a partner in 1897 to look for the traditional kind. At Port Townsend, Washington, they changed ships and sailed on to Juneau, Alaska. In Juneau, stories about the incredibly difficult and dangerous path …
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Strikes, Gold Strikes, in the Far North
Small Gold strikes occurred during the last decades of the 19th century in Alaska. Sitka had one. Windham Bay had one. In 1880 Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris made a bigger strike in Juneau. Then Skookum Jim, his friend Tagish Charlie and George Carmack made a massive strike in Canada, at Rabbit Creek in the …
Emma Did it Her Way
Emma Kelly lived in Topeka, wrote for a Chicago newspaper, thirsted, as they say, for adventure. In 1897 word came south from the Klondike that men had struck gold, and young Emma decided to head north to Dawson City. She arranged financing, acquired a list of newspapers that would print stories she sent back, and …
Stampede to the Klondike
A stampede of gold seekers descended on Skagway, Alaska in 1897. As the crow flies, Caribou Crossing and Lake Bennett lay just a few miles from Skagway and from Lake Bennett the Yukon River flowed north to the Gold Fields. No, as they say, big deal. More on Skagway Unfortunately, the stampeders weren’t crows, and …
A Taste for Exotic Furs—And Gold
A taste for exotic furs swept across the civilized world. Exotic furs grew on exotic animals and a lot of them lived at the far northern reaches of the American Continent. More on Furs On that remote portion of the globe, Native Americans, First Nations if you’re in Canada, had developed a tribal civilization …