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This is my second episode about the Klondike Gold Rush. The first one I did was archive episode number 21. In that prior episode... I summarized the Klondike gold rush that started in 1896 and ended in 1899. I described the miners, their mining methods. the business side of mining, and a little bit about the gold-fuel boomtown, Dawson City. In this episode, you'll hear a first-hand account.
of what life was truly like in Dawson City during the peak of the gold rush. I found a magazine that was published in 1900 that had an article by someone who visited Dawson City in 1898. You'll hear about his journey to Dawson and his detailed description as he walks around and explores the area. Be prepared for an immersive experience into one of the most famous gold rush boomtowns in history. He shares stories about super-rich citizens.
Local workers, dog armies, crimes and robberies, a crazy postal service, overpriced foods and services, two devastating fires. And the mud. So much mud. He finishes by describing how Dawson City changed after the gold rush was over. Some of those changes were bad. But many of the changes were good. And you probably know what I'm going to say next. Yeah, in the near future, I'll stitch together.
Both of these episodes about the Klondike Gold Rush and Dawson City into a one-hour extended bonus episode for my Soak Plus members. So stay tuned for that. But for now, I hope this episode distracts and relaxes your overactive brain squirrels. The Klondike Gold Rush Part 2. A Visit to Dawson City In 1898, I decided I was going to journey up to the Yukon. Specifically,
to the city of Dawson. At this point, most people had heard about the Klondike Gold Rush and this new boomtown of gold miners. Just a couple years earlier, In 1896, Dawson had a tiny population. It was just a few people living in tents or log homes. But then... News of big gold discoveries echoed across the land. And by the end of that same year, tiny Dawson changed into Dawson City. with a population of over 15,000 residents. That there is a boom town. By 1897, news of the gold rush fever.
had spread out even further. And by 1898, it had also reached me, all the way down to my toes. You see, gold fever. Ain't no small itch, it's a full body desire, from your head to your toes. And on July 24th, 1898, these twitching toes of mine, started their journey to Dawson City. My initial plan was to take a steamship from Seattle, but... None arrived when I planned to depart. I'm really not sure why, except it was well understood that most steamship companies weren't run very well.
So, it looked like my toes would be going the land route. The total distance was about 1700 miles, or... 2,700 kilometers. Just imagine walking from California to Tennessee. That probably doesn't sound very enticing. But back in 1898, there was a big pot of gold at the end as a reward. Well, hopefully. It was enough to motivate many people to back up. 60 to 80 pounds worth of supplies, saddle up a horse, and head north. How long it took to reach Dawson City depended on the weather.
your supplies, and your horse. Perhaps a month or two if you were lucky, or much longer if you ran into problems. Now... At the start of my journey, I had to make a choice. It was a choice many had to make. I could take the White Pass Trail or the Chilkoot Pass Trail. The second option was shorter, but more prone to avalanches. Avalanches? Yeah, no thank you. I decided on the longer and safer.
White Pass Trail. It'd be a 40-mile journey up and over some mountains. Over my first seven days, sometimes on a horse, and sometimes on my own toes. I traveled that 40 miles without any major problems. I know that may disappoint you. Perhaps you were hoping for something more exciting, like rain turning my trail to mud, or a snowstorm slowing my progress. Or perhaps an unexpected attack by a pack of rabid beavers. Nope. No mud. No snow. No demented beavers.
I was quite lucky compared to many other prior travelers who had chosen the White Pass Trail. For the next few weeks, my horse and I continued northward on our journey. to Dawson City. We trudged through some snow, hiked up steep mountain passes, paddled freezing winds, and slept in tents. But on the upside... We did enjoy many beautiful landscapes. Well, I don't know for certain that my horse cared about the scenic vistas, but I did. Anyway...
In August 1898, we finally reached Dawson City. Time for a quick break. If you feel tired and groggy during the day, then you may have sleep apnea. It's a condition that results in poor sleep for many people, including my father. It basically means He has disrupted breathing while sleeping, but not anymore because he bought a CPAP machine to improve his breathing. He loves it so much that he now won't go to bed or travel.
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To hear over 90 more episodes of Calm History, but without any breaks like this one, just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode notes. It's free, for a limited time. Alright, back to the episode. As I approach Dawson City from the water side... I could see hundreds of boats of all varieties lined up against the riverfront. There were steamboats, houseboats, scows.
hay-packed rafts, and even canoes. Many of them had canvas spread over them, serving as cheap housing compared to the overpriced cabins, huts. and hotels of Dawson City. Most of the boats were buzzing with the activity of men, women, children, dogs, horses. mules, and I even spied a goat. Some of these boats offered paid services, like river baths, laundry cleaning, and of course,
Meals and lodging. It was quite a sight to be greeted by this dense, floating population. I next ventured towards the main streets of the city. The influence of the nearby river and wet weather was represented by lots of mud. Yeah, and I mean lots of mud. The mud pools along the main street were ugly and deep, but it was still walkable. High top boots were a common defense against the mud.
as well as doing your best to walk in the drier parts of the street. In addition to the humans, the many dogs, goats, And a couple cats of Dawson just walked around these mud pools. Although I did hear that a donkey got stuck in a mud pool. But yeah. Donkeys aren't exactly the Socrates of the animal world. The local sawmills of Dawson tried to help this mud situation by throwing sawdust on the streets.
Now, laying down large pieces of lumber over those mud holes would have worked much better. But the price of wood here is way too high to do that. Wood is second only to gold for high value. Wood is just too important for other uses. The wood and lumber. are bought for creating supports in gold mines, constructing sluice boxes, and for building waterways and dams to redirect water into those sluice boxes.
There's another big use for wood. It's for burning, so the miners can thaw the frozen ground that is holding the gold captive. Dawson City does have some wooden sidewalks, but most are in disrepair, again, due to the cost of wood. The missing boards in these sidewalks can make it more challenging than just walking in the muddy streets. Similar to the boats on the river, the streets of Dawson City were packed with people.
It almost seemed like all 16,000 inhabitants were milling about the main street. It was quite the vision and experience. I started to make my way towards a hotel called the Fairview, and I continued to get a view of Dawson. There were rows of one- or two-story buildings. on both sides of the road, many of them businesses. These included saloons, hotels, doctors, photographers, auctioneers.
brokers, and food sellers. I saw a sign that four loaves of bread could be purchased for one dollar. That is about 25 times. more expensive than a loaf of bread in most any other city. Another sign offered a slightly better deal of six loaves for a dollar. This sign amused me because they left the letter A out of the word LOVES. Now being able to buy six LOVES for a dollar, well...
That there did seem like a good deal to me. Prices were also posted in gold dust. One sign advertised the best seats at a boxing contest to cost. Half an ounce of gold, which was equivalent to about $8. One of the strangest systems in Dawson was the Postal Service. Mail that arrived to Dawson would just be tacked to the front and sides of buildings and dangling in doorways. Dawson residents...
were expected to look through it every day to see if any of it was for them. I saw many pieces of mail marked with the word urgent, yet... They just stayed tacked on some building for weeks. I received some mail through this strange method, but only because someone else alerted me. after seeing it tacked on a building for three weeks. The poor post office was simply a mess because there were only a few postal officials serving a boom town.
of thousands of people. I sort of pitied them. On the other hand, the local saloons were more of what you might expect in a gold-mad boom town. The bar drinks were very expensive, selling for 50 cents or more. In addition to lots of drinking, there was also lots of gambling. The saloons were almost more of a casino than a bar. The people playing cards and roulette usually attracted spectators.
resulting in plenty of over-packed and boisterous saloons. With such strong business in the saloons, I would have expected a lot of... liquor-fuel problems. Yet, during my stay in Dawson, I only witnessed three moments of excessive drunkenness. and no mobs or riots. Even theft and robbery seemed rare to me, regardless of the shadiness of the establishment. It was normal for a man.
to spend hours in a crowded dance hall with pockets full of gold dust and not have any incidents of crime. I know this must sound like folklore or perhaps my ignorance, but there were two main factors for this type of safety in Dawson. The first reason is a wholesome dread. of the Canadian Mounted Police, whose efficiency in controlling order was well understood by everyone. The second reason is that most prospectors weren't.
uncivilized ruffians and outcasts fighting each other to find gold. Rather, most prospectors came from all parts of the civilized globe. These were people who had the means, focus, and ability to organize and pay for a long trip to Dawson City. During my visit, I met military officers, naval officers, scientists, lawyers, newspaper men, promoters, counts, sirs, and others of distinguished standings. These individuals were worldly, intelligent, and well-read.
Why else would a gold boomtown have three different weekly newspapers that sold for 25 to 50 cents an issue? In addition... Newsstands sold magazines and journals for around 75 cents each. These prices were 10 to 20 times higher than most other cities in the world. So why did newspapers and magazines sell so well in a gold-crazy city? Yeah, because these civilized gold miners needed to feed their brains.
as they tried to stuff their pockets with gold. Well, they weren't always stuffing their brains with new stories. Many times they were looking for some arts and entertainment. And Dawson City had a great variety of that type of fare, including dance halls, theaters, and operas. Unfortunately... The quality of the acting and singing in these establishments was not top-notch, but the expectations of the audiences were pretty low, even though.
The prices were so high. These places were filled to maximum capacity for most performances. Perhaps the prospectors and miners were just happy. To have some entertainment after a hard day of digging and sluicing. With all this money spending and money making, you can bet that Dawson had a bank. In fact... They had two banks, the Bank of British North America and the Canadian Bank of Commerce. When I arrived in August, the first bank I mentioned
was housed in a tent. But by September, they had upgraded to a stately wooden structure with a flagstaff next to this newly constructed bank. was the three-story log cabin office space of Alexander MacDonald, also known as the King of the Klondike. MacDonald had arrived to the Klondike two or three years before me, at the very beginning of the gold rush. He had purchased a claim from a Russian man.
for a sack of flour and a side of bacon. That claim ended up being one of the richest in the Klondike, yielding about $5,000 a day. He used the initial profits from this claim to buy 28 other claims during his first year. By the time I arrived, McDonald had interests. in 75 mines, making him the largest landowner and employer in the area. It's estimated that he made between seven and 27 million dollars in the Yukon. You can now understand why his office was right next to the bank.
I met another business owner, although his business was just a small fruit stand. But it also highlighted the strange economics of Dawson. This man rented out a five-foot front in Dawson just to sell fruit. This small storefront cost him $120 per month to rent. Yet, he told me that he was still profitable. He was also the first person to tell me about the dog armies. Yeah, dog armies. I was as intrigued as you are right now by that term. He explained that many of the shopkeepers, like himself,
had to secure his shop very carefully at the end of every day. The major concern wasn't human thieves, but rather wandering packs. of dogs. He pointed down all the streets of Dawson at these strange platform structures. I had noticed these curious constructions. since my first day by the river. They were tall and primitive structures built on stilts. I first assumed that they were meant to protect food and supplies.
From a flooding river? Nope. The owner of the fruit stand explained to me they are to protect the goods from the dog armies that roam at night. These are the challenges of a growing boomtown, as is electricity, or rather, lack of electricity. When I arrived... Dawson didn't have any electrical lights to illuminate its streets or businesses, although this changed within a year of my arrival.
This may sound rather primitive to you, but in 1898 most cities in America also didn't have electricity. The surprising thing... is that Dawson City beat most cities in America to building an electric plant and lighting up some of its streets and saloons. Don't visualize every street and every building receiving electricity and being brightly lit up within a couple days. Many of these businesses continue to rely.
on oil lanterns. And it was one of these oil lanterns that caused a great tragedy in Dawson on October 16, 1898. Two people were arguing at the green tree saloon. One threw a lit oil lamp at the other, which set the building on fire. The fire quickly started to spread. to nearby structures. Around 2,000 residents turned out and battled the fires with wet blankets, buckets of water, axes.
and just one fire engine. The fire did end up destroying about 40 buildings, including the post office, but the residents kept the entire city. from burning to the ground. Okay, let me move on to the industries of some of the women in Dawson. Many of them were commonly employed. in typewriting and stenography, which is writing in shorthand. A more lucrative field for some women was being a millionaire.
Or, more simply put, a hat maker. One of these women told me that she once made a hat, decorated it with two black ostrich feathers, and sold it for $280. Some of these women also make fur capes and sell them for $300 or more. Yeah. 1898 was a crazy year for high prices in Dawson. It didn't last, though. The gold rush suddenly ended, and the population dropped. From a peak of somewhere around 17,000 in 1898 to about 8,000 in 1899, just a year later.
which is too bad for so many reasons. One reason is that in mid-1899, they finally finished building a steam railway. that travels the full 40 miles of the White Pass Trail. And other parts of the journey from Seattle to Dawson were also improved. The journey that took me about a month to do in 1898 would take someone else about five days in 1899. But any visitors to Dawson...
in 1899 wouldn't have seen the hundreds of different types of boats, as I did, all packed in like sardines on the river's edge. Instead, they would have seen a lot less boats, and most of them would have been steamboats. Yeah, Dawson City in 1899 was very different. Some of these differences were bad, like the huge drop in population. But many changes were good, like the addition of some technology and the arrival of new supplies.
For example, the arrival of the telegraph helped Dawson communicate with the outer world, and the arrival of cow's milk helped the locals enjoy their coffee. Even more, cow's milk wasn't the only new item in the kitchens of Dawson. Agriculture efforts that were started in 1898 were literally bearing fruits, or rather vegetables and grains, in 1899. This was big news for a boomtown that struggled.
with freshly grown food for the first couple of years. But now, cabbages, turnips, peas, radishes, lettuce, and beans are raised to perfection in favorite spots along the Yukon and Klondike Rivers. One spot on the Klondike River known as Ackland Garden, is bearing oats and barley. Other spots are granting radishes, string beans, beets, onions. and spinach. Another bit of good news is that most of the prices came down. This included wood, which meant lumber was more available.
for much needed repairs. Sure enough, walking around Dawson City in 1899 was a lot easier because they finally fixed all the wooden sidewalks. And this didn't just apply to the main street, but many of the side streets were also treated to new sidewalks. Even the scenery from Main Street was improved. The view of the river used to be impeded by shacks and by many of those storehouses on stilts.
that were protecting goods from the dog armies. But not anymore. Those were mostly torn down in 1899 to reveal a beautiful view. of this scenic river. Unfortunately, though, that beautiful view is slowly being cluttered again by giant advertising signs. announcing bargain sales at the local shops. Yet, I must say, though, that even these local shops have received some lovely facelifts.
They now have corrugated iron roofs, plate glass fronts, and quality redwood shelves and counters. The lower prices means that these shops... were now able to afford to upscale their looks. They also needed to look more inviting to potential customers due to the lower population. A year ago, Every store was filled with customers, regardless of how ugly it was. But in 1899, it was much more challenging to attract customers.
Stores have also dropped their prices, so their profits are less. Now don't think that the prices of items in Dawson City in 1899... have dropped so much to be comparable to most other cities. No, that is not quite the story yet. The prices have dropped, but they are still somewhat high. Custom-made trousers are about $14, whereas high-quality shoes are a bit more reasonable at $5 or $6.
A good meal costs between a dollar and a dollar and a half. A room in a hotel is still high, between four to six dollars a night. Do you remember Alexander MacDonald, the rich king of the Klondike I mentioned? Well, he recently built a large new establishment called the Hotel Metropole. He promises to lower the rate soon to provide more affordable housing to the community. Many are hoping that he follows through with that big promise. Now...
Let me move on to some of the worst news in Dawson history. On April 21st, 1899, Dawson City. suffered another tragic fire. And this one was much worse. It's estimated that 111 buildings were destroyed. and about 75% of the town was in ashes. The fire started at 4 o'clock in the morning in an apartment above a saloon. The flames spread to nearby buildings and then across 2nd Street into the heart of the business district. The fire department did their best to try to extinguish it.
But with only one fire engine and an insufficient water supply, their efforts were futile. One of the buildings lost in the fire was the bank. of British North America. The contents of the bank and its vault included paper money and gold dust, valued at about a million dollars. Owners of small shops, hotels, gambling houses, and restaurants also lost their livelihoods.
Many locals were seen running out of their businesses or their homes, trying to save their valuables. The owners of some of the ruins claimed that there was treasure beneath the ashes. This is a moment in Dawson history when robbery was a clear problem. Martial law was declared by the mounted police. and the men patrolled the burn district day and night. An improvised jail even had to be created to house those who were caught or accused.
The next day, hundreds of miners and shopkeepers, gamblers and saloon men were living in tents, sleeping on the snow and blankets. or moving up the creeks into the settlements of the mines. Over time, though, Dawson City slowly rebuilt. New provisions arrived. to replace the losses and new buildings were constructed. The fire did result in some unplanned improvements. Many buildings of
ill repute in the main area of town were rebuilt as new types of businesses. Other business and entertainment establishments were rebuilt. bigger and better. The fire even created the opportunity to build a new giant opera house that attracted real talent. It opened in August of 1899. The fire didn't have a major effect on many mining businesses. because most of their supplies were sequestered far away in their mines or cabins. Although the gold rush was over, gold mining continued to thrive.
adapt, and progress. Several creeks were just as productive with gold in 1899 as they were a year earlier. Special mining machinery, such as steam drills, thawers, and powerful pumps, were introduced into the Klondike. These improved tools and techniques allowed for the extraction of more gold and at a faster rate than before. Some mining sites... have even added electricity, resulting in a 24-hour workday. The administration of mining laws were also improved.
This resulted in less disputes between miners and the city and easier access to records of the claims. are also handled more quickly and resolved more fairly. The years 1900 and beyond could be a big turnaround for Dawson City. Perhaps it will recover and even exceed its prior glory. Only time will tell. This is the end of the episode. If you want to hear over 90 more episodes of Calm History, including many that are over an hour, but without any ads, promos, or breaks.
then just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode notes. It's free for a limited time.