The Strike That Changed Everything: How Gold Was Found in the Klondike

Letter 9

In the vast, silent wilderness of the Yukon Valley, where rivers carved the land for millennia, grinding mountains into dust and hiding veins of gold beneath blankets of muck and moss, the stage was set for a drama of discovery that would electrify a continent. For decades, whispers of gold had drifted through the north, but it was not until the summer of 1896 that a series of chance encounters, personal slights, and stubborn searches converged on a little salmon stream, forever changing its destiny and that of the thousands who would soon flock to its banks. 

The prelude to the great strike began with Robert Henderson, a lighthouse-keeper's son from Nova Scotia who had spent twenty-three fruitless years searching the globe for gold. In 1894, out of funds and drifting down the Yukon, he was persuaded by the ever-optimistic trader Joe Ladue to prospect the creeks of the Indian River watershed. For two years, Henderson stubbornly combed the area, finding traces of gold but never the bonanza he sought. His prospector's curiosity eventually led him to climb a rounded mountain, the Dome, which separated the Indian River from the Klondike watershed. On the far side, in a deep cleft he named Gold Bottom, he panned eight cents' worth of gold, a promising prospect that convinced him he was close to his prize.

Robert Henderson

In August 1896, Henderson traveled down the Yukon to Ladue's post for supplies. On his way, at the mouth of the Tr’ondëk, or Klondike River, a place known for its salmon-drying camps, he met a man fishing. This was George Washington Carmack, a Californian living with his Tagish wife, Kate, and her relatives. Known to the miners at Fortymile as "Lying George," Carmack was an easy-going dreamer who preferred the native way of life to the grueling work of prospecting. True to the prospector's code, Henderson shared the news of his find at Gold Bottom. He invited Carmack to stake a claim but added a fateful remark: "There's a chance for you, George, but I don't want any damn Siwashes staking on that creek.”

George Carmack

The insult, aimed at Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley—Carmack’s in-laws and traveling companions—was not forgotten. Although the trio visited Henderson's camp, the cool reception, particularly Henderson's refusal to sell the  Indigenous men tobacco,  sharpened the insult. Rather than stake beside Henderson, they decided to prospect on their own. They turned their attention to Rabbit Creek, a small tributary of the Klondike where Carmack had planned to cut logs.

Skookum Jim

On August 16  (sometimes given as 17), after crossing back over the Dome from Henderson's camp, the party made their discovery. The accounts differ: Carmack claimed he spotted a thumb-sized nugget protruding from the bedrock rim, while Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley maintained that Carmack was asleep under a tree when Jim, cleaning a pan after shooting a moose, found the gold. Regardless of who saw it first, the richness of the find was staggering. A single pan yielded a quarter of an ounce of gold, worth about four dollars at local dust prices — an unheard-of amount in a country where ten cents to the pan was considered a great prospect.

In a fit of delirious excitement, the three men performed a wild, celebratory dance. The next day, Carmack staked the discovery claim for himself (earning three claims as the finder) and claims for Jim and Charley as well, renaming the creek "Bonanza." On the journey down to Fortymile to record his claim, he generously spread the news to several parties of discouraged prospectors, brandishing a shotgun shell filled with coarse gold as proof. But he never sent word back to Robert Henderson, the man who had first put him on the trail of Klondike gold.

When Carmack strode into Bill McPhee's saloon in Fortymile and emptied his shotgun shell of gold onto the bar, the initial skepticism of "Lying George" quickly vanished. The gold was undeniably different from any seen before in the Yukon Valley. A silent, frantic exodus began. In the twilight hours, boats slid away from the bank, heading upriver toward the Klondike. Within days, Fortymile became virtually a ghost town, its population drawn away by the irresistible lure of Bonanza. 

It wasn’t until July of 1897, nearly a year later, that the steamships Excelsior and Portland reached San Francisco and Seattle, carrying passengers with gold-stuffed bags and tales to match. Only then did the world erupt in gold fever.

 Henderson, toiling away on Gold Bottom, remained oblivious for several weeks until a party of stampeders came over the divide and told him of the strike on "Bonanza Creek"—the new name for Rabbit Creek. He threw down his shovel in disgust, the name "Carmack" ringing in his ears like a "cold knife in his heart." The gold had come, but not for him.

Later, Henderson tried to recover what he could, selling claims, seeking official recognition, even lobbying politicians in Ottawa and the Yukon. He was eventually granted a minor post in Dawson and a piece of unclaimed mining ground, but it was thin compensation for a man who had stood just one ridge away from the richest goldfield in the world. He died in 1933 with little to show for it, remembered by some as the man who nearly discovered the Klondike—and by others as the one who let it slip through his fingers.