Parked at Home | #6: Klondike Gold Rush
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On Thursday, April 6 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the sixth installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. During this penultimate discussion on the theme of community, park rangers Mark Mello and Allison Horrocks of BRVNHP were joined by Barak Geertsen of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska.
Mello began the talk by describing community as “a central piece of the human experience”. Many communities in the Blackstone River Valley took the form of mill villages, where a factory owner also owned the identical worker housing, stores, and even the church building. The first of these mill village — the town of Slatersville in North Smithfield of northwestern Rhode Island, which was previously called Buffam’s Mill — was created by English-American brothers John and Samuel Slater with investments from Moses Brown and his son-in-law William Almy. This control over property allowed the mill owners to dictate what happened in the community. Most of the buildings constructed by this firm still stand, and Slatersville is an important site within BRVNHP.
Up north in Skagway, Geertsen used a highly interactive presentation to ask deep questions and describe a different type of community. He asked the audience to consider how Skagway transformed from a Gold Rush town to a modern city within a few years. Alaska had been called “the last wilderness”, “the last frontier”, and “a wild land that man came to tame”. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia, with American media calling this event “Seward’s Folly”. Twenty years later, in 1890, the Frontier Movement drove people to Alaska, disrupting the lifestyle of Alaskan Natives who lived in the area for millenia.
In 1896, a pair of Tagish First Nation members, Kate Carmack and her brother, Skookum Jim Mason, along with Carmack’s American husband, George Washington Carmack, discovered gold at Rabbit Creek in the Klondike basin. “Gold Fever” swept across the United States as people rushed in from Seattle and San Francisco to explore the frontier and escape the latest economic recession. The nearest settlement to the area was Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. Wealthy prospectors started in Seattle and traveled by an all-water route, from the Pacific Ocean to the Bering Sea and up the Yukon River, but this journey was long and expensive. Poor prospectors started from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and took a route across land, down rivers, and over glaciers. Prospectors rarely knew what they were getting into.
Because of its location in a harbor amid the mountains, Skagway was a stop before Dawson City and soon became a gold rush town. The town sits on the north section of the Inside Passage at the end of a waterway called Lynn Canal, which is technically a fjord. Prospectors went upriver from Skagway towards Dawson City, then walked over three hundred more miles through Yukon Territory in Canada to reach their destination. The first “stampeders”, or gold rush participants, reached Skagway in 1897, and the area became a full mining town by 1898. This influx of adventurous minded people brought what Geertsen referred to as the “criminal element”, including saloons, brothels, and a Denver crime boss called Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith. Soapy did not last long in Skagway, as he died in a duel against bartender and surveyor Frank H. Reid on July 8, 1898, although Reid later succumbed to injuries sustained in the duel. Other more reputable Skagway residents from this time included photographer Mary “Mollie” Emmeline Montgomery Brackett, businesswoman Harriet Matilda “Ma” Pullen, and tourism professional Martin Itjen. Successful Skagway residents quickly realized they could make more money providing goods and services to prospectors than looking for gold.
Meanwhile, prospectors developed multiple trails to reach the gold fields. The Chilkoot Trail stretched thirty-three miles from Yukon Territory to Lake Bennett. While this was the shortest route, the mountains were so steep that pack animals could not travel up, and people had to carry their own supplies. The journey was made more difficult by a Canadian law that stated anyone coming through the territory had to bring a year’s supply of food, which weighed between 1500 and 2000 pounds. Stampeders carried fifty to a hundred pounds of gear at a time, making up to ten trips for each leg of the journey. Many people died along the route, the worst accident being an avalanche that killed sixty-five miners on April 3, 1898, just over 125 years ago
In contrast, George Augustus Brackett and his seven sons built the White Pass Trail while daughter-in-law Mollie took photographs. This trail was forty-five miles to Lake Bennett, but horses could somewhat walk over the trail. Unfortunately, so many horses died that the area was called Dead Horse Trail or Dead Horse Gulch. Later that year, workers began construction on White Pass Railroad. At one point, the track climbs 3000 feet in twenty miles, giving the trip a 3.9% grade. The track is three feet wide on a ten-foot railbed, as this was the most affordable construction option. Upon completion two years later, in July 1900, the track stretched for 350 miles. Two crews of workers, one from Skagway and the other from Dawson City, met in the middle at the town of Carcross, Yukon.
By the time the workers completed the railroad, the gold rush had ended! Skagway community members created urban improvements to the town, including boardwalks, a downtown area, and streetlights. Locals built churches, a baseball diamond, and a YMCA. Automobile enthusiast and Skagway resident Bobby Sheldon built the first Alaskan car in 1905. The town thrived on tourism. By the 1910s and 1920s, Martin Itjen and other tourism-minded residents led grassroots movements to preserved the history of the Gold Rush and create museums. In 1959, Alaska became a state, and in 1976, the Skagway area became a national historical park. Today, visitors have a much easier trip to visit the park, arriving by cruise, ferry, or seaplane and viewing the area through the White Pass Railway, helicopter rides, or a safely guided hikes.
Watch the full talk here: