Word of a massive gold strike spread through the North Country and prospectors rushed to the Klondike and Rabbit Creek, now known as Bonanza Creek.
But the North Country is a long way from “civilization”. It took nearly a year for word of the events along Bonanza Creek to reach the outside world. On July 17, 1897 the Portland arrived in Seattle from Dawson City and The Seattle Post Intelligencer breathlessly reported that it carried “more than a ton of gold”. The Excelsior landed in San Francisco the next day, and The San Francisco Examiner reported that it, too, carried tons of gold.
Any prospector who could pull up stakes and instantly head north did so. And, while the stories they sent back made the difficulty of the trek imminently clear, they also invested it and the North Country with an air of romance and adventure. Clearly millions in gold were there for the taking if one was man enough to get there and take it.
The flow of prospectors heading north quickly swelled into a flood of “cheechakos”, tenderfoot, would-be prospectors, and the stampede to the Klondike was on.