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 …
Tag Archives: Gold Rush
Are We Filthy Rich Yet?
The first step in getting filthy rich on the Klondike in 1898? Getting to the Klondike in 1898. The “All American Route” came through the North Pacific, the Gulf of Alaska to Valdez, Alaska and then over the Valdez Glacier. Good luck with that. The Valdez Glacier Route But let’s say you survived all with …
Who Got Rich?
Against all odds, thousands of the Stampeders who invaded the North Country in search of gold made it to the Klondike, and some got rich. Dawson City became, for a time, the largest city north of San Francisco. Saloons, dance halls, butchers, clothiers and blacksmiths lined its streets. Down on the Alaska Peninsula, Skagway mushroomed …
Chilkoot Pass
The most dramatic, certainly the most romantic, event that ever occurred in the North Country, the great stampede to the gold fields of the Klondike, came down to tens of thousands of men and women facing the timeless challenge—the incredible difficulty of traveling through the subarctic north. Like all their historical predecessors, thousands of rowdy …
Prospectors Already in the North Country Came First
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 …
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God Had Seeded the North Country with Gold
The tiny, scattered populations of First Nations natives and fur traders didn’t know it, but God had seeded their remote subarctic Country with a substance that, at the turn of the 20th century would bring it to the attention of the world with a bang. During the last decades of the 19th century small gold …
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