The Klondike Gold Rush Spreading Like Fire
Letter 2
The Klondike gold rush of 1897 was the last and most frenzied of the great international gold rushes. There were other gold rushes in the 19th century - in California, Australia and South Africa. However, even though in those locations more gold was found, none of them could compare in intensity with the Klondike gold rush.
The Klondike stampede started instantly when Excelsior, a ship carrying miners returning from the Klondike with a heavy load of gold dust and nuggets, arrived in San Francisco on July 15, 1897. When the people saw with their own eyes miners coming ashore, hauling all sorts of bags filled with gold, it was the proverbial sparkle that started a fire, which in just a few days consumed the entire world.
Today, when we read stories of the Klondike times, it is easy to get a feeling that the news of Klondike made people lose their minds—so eccentric and bizarre were sometimes their actions.
People started their journey without understanding the severity of conditions in Alaska, without proper preparations, and, especially in the first few weeks, sometimes with no idea exactly where the new gold fields were to be found. One newspaper, for example, told its readers that the Klondike lay near Chicago. Another story tells about a future prospector who arrived in Seattle and asked the station master which train he should board for Skagway.
A group of young aristocrats decided that the best way to travel to a place with little to no civilization and one of the harshest climates on the planet is on a steam yacht, complete with orchestra, personal valets, and Parisian chefs.
A man, who decided to travel to the goldfields as a tourist, packed as his outfit thirty-two pairs of moccasins, a case of pipes, a case of shoes, two Irish setters, a bull pup, and a lawn-tennis set.
A middle-aged woman took along a maid, a cook, a horse, a parrot, three canaries, a piano, two Saint Bernard dogs, and a sealskin suit.
Twelve technical-school students from Philadelphia were talked into persuading their fathers to buy a schooner and send them around Cape Horn to the Klondike. (The fact that the fathers agreed to that plan itself shows the level of madness.) After a series of mishaps, the ship finally crashed in Juneau. All the boys safely returned home.
The atmosphere of the insanity brought to life innumerable inventions, most of which being both ingenious and impractical at the same time.
Three engineers from Washington State proposed sucking gold from the riverbeds using compressed air - something like a prospector’s vacuum.
Another inventor planned to walk along the bed of the Yukon River picking up nuggets in a diving suit.
The great Nikola Tesla himself came up with an X-ray machine which, according to him, could detect the presence of gold hidden in small beds of sand and gravel.
And, to add to the mayhem, an organization called the Trans-Alaskan Gopher Co. proposed taking contracts for digging tunnels in Klondike claims with trained gophers.
The magic of gold seemed to ensnare the people's minds: They were ready to believe anything that promised to take them to riches, buy everything that said the magic word “Klondike” (from Klondike glasses at optometrists to Klondike soup at a restaurant), and even begin seeing gold everywhere.
A few workers in New York City saw gold while digging in some sand and immediately told journalists about their fortune. And in Victoria, British Columbia, a traveller saw gold in a gutter near the post office and tried to stake a claim in the middle of the city.
Now, when we look back, we can clearly see the factors that made the pandemic of “Klondicitis,” as the newspapers started calling this condition, possible. The miracles of the 19th-century technology (such as the telegraph) allowed the news to travel across the world in no time; sensational journalism ensured that all the news stories were exaggerated tenfold and were put into print without any fact-checking; and the economic depression of the time made people ready to believe in miracles and waiting for them. The combinations of those factors created a powder keg, that needed only a spark to explode. The discovery made on a previously unknown river in Alaska became such a spark.