Belinda Mulrooney: The Legendary Queen of the Klondike

Letter 11

A Flame in the Fog

Belinda Mulrooney

Belinda Mulrooney, born Bridget Mulrooney on May 16, 1872, in Carns, County Sligo, Ireland, was raised by her grandparents after her father, John Mulrooney, left for the United States shortly after her birth, and her mother, Maria Connor Mulrooney, followed in a couple of years. 

Belinda grew up with her grandparents and her mother's younger brothers, some of whom were only slightly older than she. Her close relationship with her grandmother eased the blow of her mother's disappearance. During this time, Belinda engaged in rough-and-tumble but affectionate relationships with her uncles, who "treated her just like a boy" and emphasized that she should never expect favors. Her independence and leadership skills were fostered through these experiences. A notable early display of her entrepreneurial character occurred around age nine when she saved her meager wages earned from working for others in Carns to buy the village's first oil lamp as a gift for her beloved grandmother. Belinda left Ireland in early 1885, at almost thirteen, using the fare sent by her uncle John, reluctantly leaving behind her cherished grandmother and her donkey, who was her "best childhood friend" and constant companion.

In the United States, Belinda joined her parents in Archbald, Pennsylvania. She hated it. “The dirtiest hole in the world,” she later called it. Yet even there, surrounded by coal dust and rigid gender expectations, she found ways to fight back. She became the town’s berry-picking champion by braving rattlesnake-infested hills and even disguised herself to drive mule teams in the coal mines; an unthinkable job for a teenage girl. She secretly saved her wages in a buried coffee can, determined to carve her own escape.

Philadelphia Polish and a Chicago Gamble

The turning point came in Philadelphia, where Belinda was working for the wealthy Cummings family. Under the mentorship of Belle Cummings, Belinda learned how to dress, speak, and manage money like a woman of means. With $600 saved and big dreams, she made her way to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

Chicago was a city booming with possibilities, and Belinda saw what few others did: a fortune to be made just outside the gates of the fair. Real estate, construction, food—she dived into all of it. At a time when fewer than 0.1% of contractors were women, she bought land, built housing near the Midway, and ran a restaurant that turned a handsome profit. By the time the fair closed, she had turned her six hundred dollars into eight thousand—more than most workers earned in a decade.

But fortunes can be fickle. A risky investment in San Francisco wiped her out. She needed to regroup. So she took a humble job as a stewardess aboard the City of Topeka, a passenger ship running up the coast to Alaska.

The Purchasing Agent for Alaska

Belinda made the most of her stewardess uniform. Recognizing that Alaska's remote communities were starved for luxury goods, she began a thriving side business supplying everything from fine silks to delicacies. She wasn't always scrupulous about customs laws, and smuggling became part of her repertoire; she earned the nickname "Purchasing Agent for Alaska" and built a reputation for delivering the goods.

Her success caught the attention of McDougall and Southwick, who offered her a chance to open a store in Juneau. It was a good opportunity, but when whispers of a massive gold strike in the Klondike began to circulate in 1897, Belinda didn't hesitate. She quickly gathered supplies and headed north, crossing the brutal Chilkoot Pass in April 1897.

The Klondike was calling, and Belinda Mulrooney was about to answer in spectacular fashion.

Twenty-Five Cents and a Dream

When Belinda arrived in Dawson in June 1897, after a difficult crossing, she had exactly twenty-five cents left and the goods she brought in from Juneau to sell. Belinda recalled, “I saw there was nothing in Dawson I could buy for a quarter. So I threw my last coin into the Yukon and said, ‘We’ll start clean.’”

She pitched her tent deliberately away from the saloon district. Then she opened a restaurant, bartering and negotiating for everything she needed. Her keen eye for human nature and her absolutely unshakeable confidence served her well.

One incident cemented her reputation almost immediately. When a patron named Jim McNamee tried to cheat her at the gold scales, Belinda didn't call for help or accept the loss. She physically threw him out of her establishment. Word spread fast: Belinda Mulrooney was not a woman to be trifled with.

She diversified rapidly, building cabins on Second Avenue and selling them to newly wealthy miners. She had an instinct for what these rough men wanted: not just shelter, but a touch of civilization, a hint of the comfort they'd left behind. And she knew how to price her offerings to appeal to men suddenly flush with gold dust and eager to spend it.

Belinda's breakthrough came from paying attention. While serving meals in her restaurant, she overheard miners talking about the rich claims at the junction of Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks. There was no roadhouse there, no place for the miners to eat, sleep, or socialize.

In August 1897, she built one.

The Grand Forks Hotel was a two-story building, the first business establishment at that crucial junction. It was perfectly positioned and perfectly timed. Almost overnight, it became her primary source of capital, generating the kind of money that allowed her to think bigger.

Grand Forks Hotel

She began grubstaking prospectors, acquiring mining claims in exchange for supplies. She bought claims outright when the price was right. Her operation on Cheechako Hill alone grossed $150,000 a year for several years running—an astronomical sum. 

By 1898, Belinda Mulrooney was widely acknowledged as the wealthiest woman in the Klondike. But she wasn’t just rich; she was respectable. She insisted on being addressed as “Miss Mulrooney,” always kept her past vague, and befriended women on the margins while keeping herself above reproach. She played the Dawson society like a fiddle, and everyone danced to her tune.

Fairview and the Fall

Belinda’s crowning jewel was the Fairview Hotel, opened in July 1898. More than just a hotel, it was a symbol of Dawson’s transformation from muddy tent town to civilized city. The hotel featured amenities unheard of in the North: a proper bathhouse that became wildly popular, electric lights, fine furnishings, and even the community's telephone switchboard. It quickly became the social hub of Dawson, the place where deals were made and celebrations held. Belinda herself became a fixture in Dawson society, attending events like the Yukon Order of Pioneers Christmas dinner.

Fair View Hotel

But just as the gold rush was winding down, Belinda’s life took a dramatic turn. In 1900, she married Charles Eugene Carbonneau, a dashing promoter who promised stability. Instead, he drained her fortune through shady investments in steamships and speculative mining ventures. By 1904, he had vanished. In 1906, she filed for divorce in Fairbanks, citing desertion.

Reinvention in the North and South

Was this the end of Belinda? Not even close. She rolled up her sleeves and started again, this time as a banker. In Fairbanks, another gold rush town, she co-founded the Dome City Bank in 1906 with her sister Margaret. She handled ledgers like she once handled gold dust, and once again, her reputation for competence and discretion brought her success.

In 1908, she left Alaska and bought property in Yakima, Washington. There she built “Carbonneau Castle,” a sprawling home for her parents and siblings. No longer chasing gold, she focused on family and farming. But legal battles from former partners and business rivals followed her for over a decade, battles she fought—and won.

Carbonneau Castle. Photo by Larry D. Moore

The Seamstress and the Scaler

When her fortune dwindled in Yakima, Belinda didn’t flinch. She moved to Seattle, where during the Great Depression she worked as a seamstress. During World War II, in her seventies, she cleaned steel as a shipyard scaler. No job was beneath her. She preferred the title “widow” to “divorcee,” but never married again. She lived long enough to see herself fictionalized: Harry Leon Wilson based a character on her in his popular novel Ruggles of Red Gap. 

Belinda Mulrooney Carbonneau died in 1967 at the age of ninety-five. She had lived long enough to see the world transform from the Victorian era through two world wars and into the space age. She had built towns, run hotels, operated mines, managed a bank, and worked in a shipyard. She had accumulated fortunes and lost them and started over again.

Her death certificate listed her occupation as "housewife."

That label would’ve made her laugh. Or maybe spit.

The Woman Who Would Not Be Defined

Belinda Mulrooney didn’t just survive the Klondike—she conquered it. She refused to be boxed in by her era, or by anyone else’s idea of what a woman could be. She built empires with her bare hands; she failed, rebuilt and kept going. She was Belinda Mulrooney, and there has never been anyone quite like her.

And that, in the end, is why we still tell her story.