Before August 17, 1896, Americans had little interest in Alaska, a far off “district”—not even a territory—full of wolves and ice and forests. That attitude started to change 110 years ago today, when a Tagish Indian known as Skookum Jim spotted something shimmering among the stones in a creek near the Yukon River. The Klondike Gold Rush began as soon as news of the discovery reached the states, and between 1897 and 1899 1 in every 700 Americans abandoned home and set out for the “Golden River.”
More than a half million pounds of gold have been found in the Yukon since 1896. Yet the story of the men and women who did the mining is more valuable than all that ore. The sudden rush into the Northwest, as well as the equally sudden retreat, poses a big question. Why did so many late-nineteenth-century Americans decide to leave their farms and factories and search for gold in a faraway, brutal, and alien place?
There’s more if you click on the link, including this nugget: “At a time when workers were lucky to make 10 cents an hour, gold was worth $17 an ounce.”