by Howard Blum
George gave his predicament some thought, and soon he came up with a plan. Why not set the fires in the shaft in the morning? That way he could spend the day finishing up the cabins, and at the same time the shaft would be thawing out. After a quick supper, he’d head off to dig for bedrock.
It became an arduous routine. He’d work all day; and then at night, he would climb down into the dark, smoky hole and dig by the soft glow of candlelight. He was at the point of utter exhaustion. The shovel felt very heavy in his hands. But he knew he was getting nearer to the bedrock, and that goal drove him on.
JIM, HOWEVER, was troubled. It wasn’t that he was averse to the hard work and the endless hours. And he could tolerate the change in George’s attitude; he’d never expected too much from a white man anyways. But the thought that George was exploiting him had begun to take hold. They’d been working the site for over two months, and only one shaft had been dug. And it was on George’s claim. He was beginning to suspect that Charley and he were working to make George rich. The white man had no intention of assisting them. When Jim felt he could no longer tolerate the one-sided way things were proceeding, he confronted George.
“When we dig shaft on my claim?” he demanded.
George didn’t reply. Instead, he gave Jim a long, cool look. He was the boss of this outfit; he didn’t have to answer any questions. And he didn’t cotton to the big Indian’s tone. It was damn impertinent. Hell, it was one more reason why he should never have partnered up with a couple of scraggly Chinooks in the first place. He was of a mind to let the Indians stew. But in the next moment, George realized it wouldn’t do to have them storm off. So he swallowed his pride and told Jim the truth.
“Listen, Jim, and you too, Charley,” he said sharply. “We have to work together to get gold out. I can’t work my two claims by myself. I need your help. You fellows can’t work your claims alone either. You need my help. That way everybody helps, no fighting. Jim, Charley, George—three partners. Savvy?”
Jim gave no sign that he knew what George was talking about. For a moment George thought that the two Indians would indeed return to their village for the winter. For that matter, the way Jim was staring at him, his face hard and full of scorn, George wouldn’t have been surprised if the Indian had thrown a punch. George, though, extended his hand. And Jim shook it. Charley did, too. And just like that, an agreement was formalized.
George was true to his word. Over the next four years, more than $1 million worth of gold would be taken from their claims on Bonanza Creek, and they would share it equally. It had never, in fact, been George’s intention to exploit the two Indians. His plan had always been to dig one shaft at a time; once he hit bedrock, they’d move on to Jim’s site. He’d reckoned there was no need, though, to share his plans with them. Just as there was no reason to explain that while they were still his partners, they were no longer his friends. His accomplishment had shattered the bonds of whatever they once might have had in common.
EVEN DURING that first winter, George and his crew were not alone on the Klondike. The outside world still had no idea that gold had been discovered in the Yukon, but the river valley was overrun with veteran prospectors who’d heard the news and rushed north to stake claims. Within days, George had neighbors up and down Bonanza Creek. The next wave of sourdoughs had to settle for sites on nearby Eldorado Creek. “Bonanza’s pup,” they grudingly called it. They’d soon discover, however, that the short snaking creek held untold riches. The days had turned cold, and yet the wilderness was bustling with miners working claims. At night the strong, bright flames from hundreds of fires rising up from thawing shafts reached toward the starry sky, and the crimson reflections crawled up icy mountainsides lit by the white moon.
It was a heady time. The Yukon River Valley was a snow-covered wilderness populated with men who just six months earlier had been dead broke and who now were intoxicated by the realization that they’d soon be millionaires. At the center of all this merry commotion a tent city began to take shape. A winter ago Dawson had been nothing more than a quiet stretch of frozen swampland near the mouth of the Klondike. There was a sawmill that was shut most of the year; a squalid saloon with the same defeated drunks at the bar day after day; and a trading post famous throughout the north for the credit it routinely extended to prospectors. Now Dawson was the richest community in the world.
Except no one had any money. In the spring, the sourdoughs would wash off the gravel piled in their dumps and sell the accumulated gold in Seattle for cash. But that first winter they were a collection of millionaires with empty pockets. The only tangible resources they possessed were the nuggets and yellow dust they’d scoop from their piles of paydirt. All they had was gold; and they had plenty of it.
So gold became the accepted currency. Dawson, a disorderly ragtag collection of dirty tents in the middle of nowhere, was a more expensive place to live than Paris, London, or New York. A small keg of bent nails cost $800. Salt was literally worth its weight in gold dust. Eggs were traded for nuggets. A Juneau butcher came north with a raftload of beef cattle and in weeks had sold off his small herd for $200,000 in gold. Poker was played for fantastic pots, piles of nuggets and dust that could easily ransom a king. A round of drinks would wind up costing the price of a house in other parts of the world. Every night that winter the saloon would be packed with high-spirited men who couldn’t believe their luck.
THAT WINTER, George hit bedrock. The weather had turned so cold that some days his mustache became coated with a white frost. But he would still trudge out of the cabin and climb down into the shaft. His bandanna offered only a small protection from the curl of smoke that continued to rise from the embers of the bonfire. After all the weeks, smoke had seeped into the frozen walls of dirt; the sharp, strong smell enveloped him. Yet he didn’t hesitate. He’d shovel off the ash, fill the bucket with the melted ooze, and then dig. He’d reached fourteen feet when he heard the clear, unmistakable sound of his shovel banging against solid rock.
George was elated, but there was no time for celebration. Instead, as he’d always planned, he went straight to work sinking a shaft on Jim’s claim. They hit bedrock there in no time at all, or so it seemed to George after all the frustrations at his site. Then they went to work putting in a shaft on Charley’s section.
By February, they were hoisting up buckets of paydirt laced with veins of gold from all four claims. George couldn’t wait to tell Rose how things were working out. He wrote:
I sent you a letter last Fall telling you of the strike I made. Well, it has growed wonderful since then. Everybody here is a millionaire. Eldorado Creek comes into Bonanza about a half mile above me, It is something wonderful. The pay has been located for four miles now and some the claims they think will pay a million and not one of them are blanks.… This is only one chance in a lifetime and I must make the best of it.
After they ran the gravel through the sluice box in the spring, then weighed the gold in Dawson, George no longer had any doubts that he was a wealthy man. The yield for that first winter from the four claims totaled about $60,000. Two of the sites were in his name, so his share would be $30,000. That would be sufficient to buy a sizable ranch in Modesto, and there’d still be money left to pay off Rose’s mortgage, too. But it wasn’t enough for George. He had written his sister that this was “one chance in a lifetime” and he was not prepared to walk away from it.
By June, many of the prospectors along the banks of the Klondike had booked tickets to Seattle. They stuffed their haul of gold into coffee cans, valises, and backpacks and made the trip to St. Michael to board the steamer. But George was not ready to cash in. When he returned home, he wanted to be very rich.
THIRTY-FIVE
oapy was transformed. He now had his sights set on a new, breathtakingly rich scheme, and he was raring to go. Just three months after he’d mailed the misleading letter to his wife, an event happened that as if by magic restored his wily energy and his old assurance.
The elixir was an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was a scoop, actually, and an intrepid one to boot. The editors had received a tip that the steamer Portland had shipped off a month earlier from the old Alaskan port of St. Michael on the Bering Sea, and was bound for Seattle carrying an incredible cargo. It was filled with prospectors who had rushed to a remote gold field in the Yukon wilderness following a discovery by someone named George Carmack. They’d mined all winter and spring, and now they were loaded down with gold. So the newspaper had charted a tug to intercept the steamer. As soon as the Portland entered the sound, newsmen from the Post-Intelligencer were scrambling over the ship’s rails.
And what a story they found! Times were tough. America was still gripped by a depression. But here were men who less than a year ago had been broke and now were rich. They had gold jammed into their suitcases, in caribou-hide pokes, in jam jars, old tonic bottles, tomato cans, and bundled up in Indian blankets. Gold was stacked on deck, in the purser’s office, and piled high in cabins. The Portland was a treasure ship.
An extra edition of the Post-Intelligencer hit the Seattle streets before the Portland docked. The front page screamed in huge type:
But while the headline surely grabbed the reader’s attention, the opening sentence of the story that ran below was inspired. Beriah Brown wrote that the steamer carried “more than a ton of solid gold aboard.”
The reporter had miscalculated. When all the gold on the Portland was added up, the total was more than two tons. But “a ton of solid gold” proved sufficiently captivating. The phrase was telegraphed around the world.
In Spokane, Soapy read the report even before the Portland had headed into Seattle’s harbor. He took the night train and was part of the throng of five thousand people who crowded the waterfront as the steamer anchored at Schwabacher’s dock. It was pandemonium.
“Show us your gold!” screamed the crowd, and in response the miners lined along the boat’s rail happily raised suitcases and pokes high into the air. The crowd cheered. Soapy stared at the sea of excited faces all around him, people hot with visions of their own anticipated fortunes, and he was inspired.
He returned to the Owl in Spokane, but now he had no time for poker. That day he wrote to “Reverend” Bowers in Denver. “Call out the troops,” he announced, ordering Bowers to round up the old gang. He fired off another letter to a Denver police officer who had taken part in a few of his old swindles. Soapy hoped to persuade him to turn in his badge and sign on for the Big Scheme that would make them all rich. “You will know that there is a good chance for a good talker and a petrified man in Klondyke at this stage of the game,” he wrote. Bursting with his former confidence, he continued, “And if I didn’t say it myself, there ain’t any of them that can out-talk old Jeff. We’ll open up a real estate and mining office when we get there, and I’ll gamble and they’ll tumble like tired doves.”
Within days the boys started gathering around. They arrived from San Francisco, Denver, from all parts of the West as soon as they received the word. And as the reunited gang made preparations to head north, if any of them dared to mention their boss’s fervent pledge never, never to return to Alaska, Soapy would look them straight in the face. Then he’d earnestly remind them that the only promise a gambler keeps is his vow to break all his promises.
THIRTY-SIX
he stampede began. Just as George Carmack’s handful of gold nuggets deposited on the blower in a one-room wilderness saloon had ignited a dash to the Klondike by a passel of sourdoughs, the arrival of “a ton of gold” in Seattle created a worldwide frenzy. At a time when an economic depression continued to squeeze lives and cloud futures, the prospect of dipping a pan into a cool Yukon stream and—presto!—finding a fortune of bright yellow gold dust was an answered prayer. The Klondike suddenly loomed as an enchanted land, a fairy-tale world where wishes would be fulfilled—if one were bold enough to make the journey.
“Klondicitis,” as the New York Herald dubbed the phenomenon, gripped folks everywhere. A giddy mix of greed, a yearn for adventure, and wishful thinking, Klondicitis convinced people to abandon their old lives in a rash instant and confidently set off for the far north. “Klondike or bust!” pledged tens of thousands, the three words sealing an oath of allegiance to an intrepid fraternity. The lure of gold, people in all walks of life agreed, was too hypnotic to resist.
In Seattle, it was as if the city had been attacked by a devastating plague, so quickly did thousands of its citizens rush to escape. Streetcar service came to a halt as the operators walked away from their jobs. Policemen resigned. Barbers closed shops. Doctors left their patients. The Seattle Times lost nearly all its reporters. Even the mayor, W. D. Wood, boarded a steamer to Alaska, wiring his resignation from the ship rather than dallying to say his good-byes at city hall. “Seattle,” a New York Herald reporter observed, “has gone stark, staring mad on gold.”
In California, the Sacramento Valley fruit pickers decided they’d rather pluck gold nuggets from bedrock than oranges from trees. The gold fields near Jackson couldn’t keep their miners. At medical schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco, scores of members of the graduating classes announced plans to settle in the Yukon Valley. Those with jobs and those without jobs—people up and down the Pacific coast found a reason to race north.
All across the continent hopes soared. The day after headlines in the New York papers announced the arrival of the treasure ship, two thousand tickets to Alaska were sold. The following day, another twelve hundred people signed up. In Chicago, stockyard workers tossed off their bloodstained aprons and decided to become prospectors; the hunt for gold, they assumed without the slightest evidence, offered a chance at a better life than the gruesome, low-paying occupation with which they passed their days. “I have never seen such a change pass over the faces of people,” said Senator C. K. Davis of Minnesota in astonishment.
Throughout the world the time was right for great expectations; people who had nothing were willing to risk all they had. The century had seen previous gold rushes in California, Australia, and South Africa, but none had taken hold of people’s imaginations as immediately as this new stampede. Within months men and women were blithely crossing continents and oceans, bound for a rough wilderness of which they had no previous knowledge. Crammed boats sailed from Norway and Australia. A group of Greeks headed out from Jerusalem. Several hundred Italians made their way to California, an advance party, they promised, for thousands more. Three hundred Scots sailed to Montreal and then planned to cross Canada on foot. From England alone, the former prime minister of Canada Sir Charles Tupper estimated with a persuasive authority, 100,000 would-be prospectors set forth. All over the world the lust to become rich sparked glittering dreams.
The opportunity for adventure swayed brave hearts, too. The West had been tamed. The world was largely at peace. For those who craved excitement, an expedition to the far north appeared as a magnificent challenge. Winfield Scott Stratton, already blessed by the fortune he had made at Cripple Creek, outfitted two riverboats to sail up the Yukon. Brigadier General M. E. Carr, mired in a stultifying law practice after a dashing military career, gave it all up to rush to the gold fields. A. J. Balliot, once celebrated as Yale’s quarterback but now languishing in a downtown office, headed for Alaska. At a sprightly seventy-one, E. J. “Lucky” Baldwin, flush with millions from hotels and real estate, decided that this was his last chance to wring the most out of his days and joined the stampede. As champagne corks popped and an orchestra played, a clique of well-heeled English aristocrats gaily steamed across the Atlantic in a yacht. Like so many others on their way to the Yukon, they sought to live to the limit; they looked forward to facing up to dangers and returning home with tales of their triumphs.
In the feverish initial ten days, fifteen hundred people had left Seattle and nine more ships were busily boarding passengers. By August, the northwest coast shipping industry had pressed into service all manner of crafts, many of them of
dubious seaworthiness, and twenty-eight hundred people would embark each week toward the Lynn Canal. As of September 1, nine thousand passengers and thirty-six thousand tons of freight had sailed off just from Seattle.
The coming of winter had little effect on the enthusiasm of people who had never experienced the far north’s penetrating cold or attempted to trudge over a snow-blocked mountain pass when the winds were howling and ice as hard as granite gripped the ground. In mid-August of 1897 a concerned U.S. secretary of the interior issued an official warning to those impetuous enough to set out at this late date. The Canadian minister of the interior released a similar advisory, urging travelers to wait until the spring. The newspapers offered their advice, too. “TIME TO CALL A HALT,” pleaded one headline. The accompanying article pointedly admonished: “There are but a few sane men who would deliberately set out to make an Arctic trip in the fall of the year, yet this is exactly what those who now set for the Klondike are doing.”
There was no way, though, to dissuade people whose convictions were firmly set. The stampede to the gold fields charged on. In that first winter, at least 100,000 pushed across the world toward the Yukon and another 1 million people made arrangements to go.
Only a few of these travelers, though, had a realistic appreciation of the struggles that awaited them. Most believed that the boats would be dropping them off at the gold fields. The geography of the north, including the long distances from the Alaskan port cities in American territory to the Klondike creeks in Canada, was ignored. And the will that would be required to complete this journey, an expedition over steep, snowcapped mountains furrowed with narrow trails and down twisting rivers with stretches of churning rapids, was not even pondered. The desire to get rich overwhelmed practical considerations. The fact that even after arriving in Alaska travelers would have no chance to reach the Klondike until the following summer—six long months away—did not enter their calculations. They just kept coming.