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 into a rough wild-west town with eighty saloons, hundreds of prostitutes and at least one famous gangster named Soapy Smith.
Some people struck it rich, mostly the merchants, profiteers and hookers who traded their goods and services for the gold seekers’ dwindling funds. But everywhere along the route, the massive influx of travelers changed the route itself.
Investors rushed to put together financing for a narrow gauge railroad over the White Pass from Skagway through Caribou Crossing to a burgeoning tent city they called “Closeleigh” at the downstream end of the Miles Canyon rapids. “Closeleigh” didn’t stick. The Stampeders who passed through thought the rapids looked like the white mane of an enormous horse, and the city, the gold rush bequeathed to Yukon Territory would forever be known as Whitehorse. Read about the genesis of the Gold Rush Read about what it took just to get there.
The Gold Rush ended—as abruptly as it had begun—and the outsiders went away. A few remained behind to become part of the permanent population of the North Country, but the North Country itself returned to its natural state of rugged isolation. But the ghost towns, the trails and roadhouses, the railroad and its inland terminus, Whitehorse, remained as permanent fixtures, blending in as if they had been there forever.
They would all be part of the world that awaited the arrival of the Corps in 1942. Click Here to Find More Information about the Alcan Project