YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS Yukon Frontiers Historic Resource Study of the Proposed Yukon-Charley National River

The Klondike gold rush created the greatest impact in the history of the Yukon. Although never as rich as several of the western gold rushes, the Klondike resulted in new techniques of mining, subsequent gold rushes, and the development of an isolated country. To the Klondike thousands came as they had fifty years before to California. The Yukon, however, presented a more hostile environment, and many would-be miners lost their lives because of recklessness or carelessness.

The discovery of the Klondike has been credited to George Washington Carmack, who filed the first claim. [1] Canadians, however, boast that Robert Henderson mined the first gold and gave Carmack the tip-off. Native historians now claim that Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley found the gold while Carmack slept. Nonetheless, the discovery occurred and a snow-balling stampede was on. First Fortymile smiled in disbelief but quietly investigated "Lying George's" assertions of gold on the Klondike River. Then letters to Circle City emptied that community within a month. By the winter of 1896 the Yukon's first real gold rush had begun.

The ground proved exceedingly rich by Yukon standards. Individuals claimed up to $800 from a single pan of pay dirt. Others received more than $140,000 for a winter's work. All the best claims had been staked long before the steamboat Excelsior arrived in San Francisco bearing the first Klondike gold. Claims changed hands for exorbitant sums. Joe Ladue named his town Dawson for the Canadian geologist who made the first report on the mineral resources of the Canadian Yukon. Eventually lots in Dawson reached as high as $5,000 a front foot. But most of the miners, not wanting to take time to build log cabins, lived in tents. Life was a frantic rush.

Unlike earlier American gold rushes and later Alaskan stampedes, Canadian government officials prevented the usual chaos, anarchy and violence. William Ogilvie, Dominion land surveyor, arrived in the winter of 1896-97 to survey Ladue's townsite. He stayed on to survey the two major creeks, Bonanza and Eldorado. Canadian law allowed five hundred feet per claim. In the urgent confusion of staking, many miners had haphazardly over-staked. These small claims between larger claims became known as "fractions" and, since all other land had been staked, sold for high prices, Ogilvie's foresight prevented endless legal disputes. Following Ogilvie came the Northwest Mounted Police, who imposed law and order. Although life in Dawson was hectic and lively, it was seldom violent or disorderly.

When news of the Klondike gold rush reached Seattle and San Francisco, a nation caught in the throes of a depression responded with exuberance. The frontier was not dead. Adventure, romance, and gold still remained in the Far North. Within months Dawson swelled with the influx of stampeders. They arrived over the Chilkoot and White Passes, across the Valdez Glacier, up several Canadian "trails", and by steamboats from St. Michael. [2] But the easy gold claims had been snatched up long before. Americans, accustomed to American law, chaffed at being taxed ten percent of their gross production. Discontent hovered near the surface as Alaskan "sourdoughs" trimmed their behavior to Canadian law. The old rules and customs that had made the Alaska-Yukon camps cohesive communities no longer applied: doors were locked, claims were jumped, and men did not trust their partners.

While thousands poured into Dawson and others flowed out in search of new bonanzas, men overlooked one precious commodity—food. Gold-crazed miners, eager to be among the first, had travelled light, expecting to buy their year's supply at Dawson with the nuggets they would easily mine. But a series of incidents created panic. The two commercial companies owned only six small steamboats, whose design often left them stranded in the shallow water of the Yukon Flats. When this happened in September 1897, Dawson became frantic. The commercial companies had already rationed their supplies because the steamboats had been unable to keep up with the heavy influx of people. Furthermore, the companies had stocked up on liquor and hardware because of their inflationary value rather than food. [3] As the Yukon began to freeze, the Northwest Mounted Police joined with the commercial companies to urge newcomers without proper provisions to leave immediately. Hundreds fled downriver towards the marooned boats at Fort Yukon; others returned the way they had come.

Meanwhile the United States War Department ordered Captain Patrick Henry Ray and Lieutenant Wilds P. Richardson to Alaska. They were to investigate and report on whether troops were necessary, whether civil authorities were providing protection to life and property, whether the people were law-abiding, and whether there was food in the country for the population to winter. [4] From St. Michael in August, Ray reported Dawson's food shortage grave. He also observed a "turbulent and lawless" element entering the country lured by the Klondike's gold. As he steamed up the river, he recognized the isolation of the Yukon. There was no law enforcement, no communication, and no government.

At Circle City an astonished Captain Ray confronted his first miners' meeting. More than 180 miners had arrived in Circle from Dawson or Birch Creek to learn that the commercial companies had by-passed Circle City for the more profitable Dawson market. Thus, the warehouses were empty as winter closed in. Concerned, upset, and even scared, the miners called a miners' meeting. At the meeting they decided to hold up the next steamboat and obtain the necessary supplies. As Ray stared into the shotguns of the miners, he called attention to their "unlawfulness". The miners responded, "There is no law or any person in authority to whom we can appeal". [5] They then cleared the boat of stragglers and posted guards to prevent pilfering. All goods received full payment at Dawson prices. To avoid charges of favoritism, they stopped both the Alaska Commercial Company's Bella and the North American Transportation and Trading Company's Portus B. Weare. Ray criticized the miners for their radical steps in interfering with legitimate business, yet also condemned the commercial companies for their monopolistic practices and poor planning. [6]

When an unseasonable warm spell cleared the river of ice, a mad dash to Fort Yukon ensued. Captain Ray was at the center of the scattered fleet. He was certain that there would be violence when the Dawson hundreds landed at Fort Yukon. His premonition proved correct, in fact he narrowly averted an armed revolution. Immediately commercial companies turned over their merchandise to him for protection. He then distributed outfits to the destitute in exchange for chopping wood. The companies' exaggeration of their supplies stored at Fort Yukon created additional headaches. A group of demanding, belligerent miners called another miners' meeting to take the warehouses by force. Ray and Richardson succeeded in fending off the threat, but the North American Transportation and Trading Company was looted, and $6,000 was stolen. One "destitute" miner obtained an outfit under false pretenses. Although he was apprehended and jailed in Circle City, a miners meeting voted to release him. Blatantly he auctioned off his outfit and gambled away his proceeds. [7]

By January Ray reported that neither Dawson nor Circle City remained in danger—the starvation scare had passed. [8] But the miners meetings convinced Ray that, against the increasing lawless and turbulent element, the civil government was totally inadequate. He recommended a semi-military government with military posts along the Yukon at St. Michael, Tanana, and near the Canadian border at Mission Creek. This military force would have a moral effect on the population, support the civil authorities, control the Yukon River, prevent smuggling, and provide law and order. The striking contrast between Canadian law and government, symbolized by the Northwest Mounted Police, and the absence of any government or law enforcement in Alaska filled him with frustration. Furthermore, the country needed exploration surveys, roads, railroads, light-draft steamers, and agricultural development. At the same time Ray made these recommendations, the commercial companies and the few civil officials also requested protection and assistance. [9] Thus, Lieutenant Richardson remained throughout the winter to patrol the river, preserve order in the mining towns, and extend relief and medical aid. [10]

Although the starvation threat consumed most of Captain Ray's time, he still reported his observations on social conditions, population, and settlement. He estimated that 1,200 people lived along the Yukon between the Tanana and the Canadian boundary. [11] Observing that the hunger panic had winnowed out the weak and dependent miners, he noted that the more self-reliant and persevering had spread out to live off the land and had explored, prospected, and staked new areas. Yet more significantly, these miners were Americans returning from Canada. Accustomed to less restrictive American laws, they expressed dissatisfaction with Canadian laws, especially the royalty on their output. Since no rich new discoveries had been made in Canada, they were returning to the good paying districts they had abandoned during the Klondike rush. Creeks and rivers such as Birch, American, Seventymile, and Coal drew them west.

Ray did not underestimate the anger that Americans felt over the the restrictive Canadian laws and customs. The Alaska Mining Record in Juneau composed a poem expressing the miners sentiments: [12]

"Stay on the Yankee Side of the Line"

There is gold in Alaska, and plenty of it too,
But don't rush on to Dawson, for surely if you do
You'll remember what I've told you in the Record of this place,
Which has never printed else but truth about this golden race.
Keep on the side of freedom; I mean don't cross the line,
And millions of our countrymen may settle down and mine,
For the Stars and Stripes are free to all, our canyons and our gold,
And ten percent is robbery—and ten percent, I'm told,
Must be paid up in solid cash or else your claim is lost
And confiscated by the crown regardless of its cost,
Infringing rights and all that's dear, your liberty and time;
Dominion law is slavery; let's brand it as a crime.

This disaffection may be seen also in the patriotic names given camps and creeks—Eagle City, Star City, Nation, Independence, Union Gulch, and Fourth of July Creek.

Before Captain Ray left Alaska in February 1898, he estimated the population of these new towns: Eagle City with 200, Star City with 250, Charley River (later called Independence) with 180, Coal Creek with 75, and Circle City with 250. [13] Ivy City and Nation City were founded within the year. Tied together by the main thoroughfare of the interior, the Yukon River, these small communities kept abreast of developments within their region and the broader mining community.

The disaffected American miners first returned to Mission Creek, just across the international border. Here the mountains fell away from the river, opening a perfect townsite on a fifteen-foot-high riverbank. American Creek, tributary of Mission Creek, had produced gold as early as 1895. Difficulty in controlling the creek's water, however, had prevented work on the main creek, and it was eventually abandoned. [14] When Spurr visited the diggings in 1896 he found a number of men camped at the junction of Mission Creek and the Yukon, not far from Francois Mercier's abandoned trading post, Belle Isle. [15] Mission Creek had taken its name from an Episcopal mission that had once stood next to the trading post but had been abandoned since 1888. [16] In 1896 the United States Geological Survey estimated that thirty-five miners worked American Creek with an output of $15,000, but the Klondike strike quickly drained this area. [17] In 1897, for example, only the owners of seven claims remained behind to work their mines. Each one, nevertheless, averaged twenty dollars a day. [18]

While American miners worked the Klondike, they discovered and learned, new mining methods and adopted old ones that they would later apply to Alaskan creeks. Initially they mined old stream bars, as they had in Fortymile and Stewart Rivers and Birch Creek, with gold pan and rocker. Quickly they graduated to gulch diggings that required either burn and drift methods or open-cut and sluicing methods. [19] Once these claims had been staked, a few adventurers experimented with bench mining. The gamble paid off. New possibilities for claims arose overnight, and new methods developed. [20] The poorer miner began deeper drift mines, but the miner with capital and labor turned to hydraulic mining, using pressurized water to blast off the deep overburden. When the miners returned to American Creek, they noted that the benches were 200 feet deep but that the claims were 1320 feet long and allowed enough footage to make capital investments worthwhile. Other problems arose, too. The presence of running water at bedrock, even in the coldest weather, made prospecting and drift mining difficult. Moreover, the annual rainfall, eleven inches, and the grade of the creek were not sufficient to create the necessary pressure for hydraulic mining. [21] But Klondike methods would later prove invaluable on other creeks.

By the end of the winter of 1897-98, as a result of the discontent and restlessness of American miners, the starvation scare, the absence of claims in the Klondike area, and the growing appreciation for older Alaskan claims, guide books reported "a great stampede to American Creek." [22] Finally on May 28, 1898, a group of twenty-eight miners laid out a townsite they called Eagle City. Cabin sites were allotted by drawing numbered slips of paper out of a hat and sold for $500 to $1,000. [23] By summer government geologists reported more than 500 cabins and a population of 1,700. A sawmill had been moved in along with three commercial companies—Alaska Commercial Company, North American Transportation and Trading Company, and Alaska Exploration Company. [24] The town even boasted its own handwritten newspaper, The Eagle City Tribune, edited by Charles C. Carruthers. [25] Its editorials discussed differences between Canadian and American mining laws, customs, and tariffs.

The population boom proved fleeting. Although 140 claims had been staked on American Creek and 71 on Mission, the population dropped to 400. [26] Yet coarse gold, which often determined the quality of the claim, had been found—even a nugget valued at $192. [27] Meanwhile the Secretary of War followed the recommendation of the recently promoted Major Ray and, pending formation of a civil government, included Eagle City within the boundaries of the military reservation. In late 1899 another gold rush, this time at Nome, almost wiped out the small mining community. Eagle City's location on the Yukon River, supported by services of a military post, government officials, and three of the largest trading companies, saved it from joining the ranks of other gold-rush ghost towns.

Simultaneously the spin-off from the Klondike affected every creek and river in the upper Yukon. Although gold had been discovered in 1887 on the Seventymile River and men took out fifty dollars a day from rockers, little development occurred. During the summer of 1897 fifteen men averaged $2,500 each on the river, but because of numerous falls and rapids it remained only superficially prospected. [28] During the winter of the starvation scare, 1897-98, the miners laid off a townsite, Seventymile City, at the mouth of the Seventymile River. During spring break-up the town flooded, so another was started two miles up the Yukon called Star City. [29] By June 1898 enough people, approximately 250, lived at Star City to qualify for an officially designated Post Office. [30] In February 1899, when Lieutenant Richardson came through the two towns enroute to Eagle, he spent the night at the upper town. He felt that it had a good townsite with forty to fifty cabins and a small Alaska Commercial Company store. [31] The population of the towns remained stable at 250 for two years. Then word of the Nome strike hit. By September 1900 Star City and Seventymile City became ghost towns.

Of the forty cabins at Star city (#27) recorded by Lieutenant Richardson and Samuel Dunham, only ten remain today. The cabins lie not on the first high bench above the Yukon but on the second, probably to avoid being washed away again. Historically the cabins were separated by fifty to seventy-five yards of open space, but today forest growth has intruded between them and destroyed the visual aspect of a town. The sod roofs that once provided good winter insulation have collapsed on all the cabins. The unpeeled logs reflect the miners' concern for expediency—gold came first, comfort and beauty second. A few builders squared off the inside walls to resemble the frame walls of their "civilized past". The ruins of two boats left abandoned next to their cabins depict a water-oriented lifestyle. Very few relics from the past remain. Scavengers and souvenir-seekers of earlier eras have left little but the basic structures for posterity. But of the five gold-rush communities between Eagle and Circle, more fabric remains at Star city.

There are no remains of Seventymile city—the river has undercut the town's bank and washed away all that remained.

Farther downriver near the mouth of Fourth of July Creek another pair of cities began the summer of 1898. Ivy City and Nation City, founded three miles apart, reflected the optimism felt on Fourth of July Creek. At Nation City on June 6, 1898, a miners' meeting established the rules for organizing a town: each lot measured fifty by one hundred feet, each block had eight lots, only one lot allowed per person, the streets that ran parallel with the river were named, and those perpendicular numbered, and streets were forty feet wide. [32] Although sixty-six lots were eventually claimed, by winter Lieutenant Richardson observed only seven or eight cabins. [33] At Ivy City the Arctic Express Company built the only commercial building. By 1900 the brief stampede that recorded more than one hundred claims on Fourth of July Creek proved a disappointment, and the district was abandoned for Nome's greater potential. [34]

Nation city (#52) survived until the 1930's. It once included twelve to fifteen houses, a roadhouse, a small store, and a steamboat landing. It is doubtful that the population ever rose above forty to fifty people, who lived by mining probably supplemented by woodcutting. During the late 1960's two local trappers salvaged the logs from the old buildings to build two of their own cabins. They used much of the remaining logs for firewood. Thus only the foundations of nine buildings remain. A large sled that resembles several found at Fourth of July creek mine is in poor shape. A few pieces of machinery, doghouses, and a cache are all the supporting fabric left at Nation City.

The ubiquitous George Matlock started a homestead (#53) one mile up the creek that was later patented by Fred Krager—the only homestead in the Yukon-Charley proposal. It was burned to the ground in a forest fire in 1969. Willows, alders, and small trees are encroaching on the cleared spaces.

Ivy City (#58) lived only two years. Little remains of it today. A trapper used most of the old buildings for firewood. What he left standing was wiped out in the forest fire of 1969. A historical archeologist could establish the extent of the townsite and recover any artifacts buried by time.

When Lieutenant Richardson made his winter trip from Circle to Eagle in February 1899, he met the "emergency relief reindeer herd" near Charley River. During the starvation scare of 1897, Congress had authorized $200,000 for the purchase and shipment of Lapland reindeer herds to provide relief to Dawson. Although experienced Lapp herdsmen were hired, the reindeer's staple diet, caribou moss, did not grow along the route from Haines to Dawson. Only 125 out of 539 reindeer survived to reach Circle two winters later. [35]

While at the mouth of the Charley River, Richardson recorded the beginnings of a small town called Independence. Here eight to ten cabins made up the town, which supplied sixty men mining the Charley River. Todd Creek reported the best prospects with thirty-cent pans. [36] Although no "towns" existed, miners described good possibilities on adjacent Sam and Coal Creeks.

Nothing remains at Independence.

Just downriver from Todd Creek two cabins remain on Silvia Creek (#84). They undoubtedly represent this period of prospecting on the Charley River. Once again the sod roofs have collasped, pulling down with them several of the logs from the walls. Nevertheless, enough fabric remains to capture a feeling for the miners who built them. Lumber must have been scarce as no door or window frames exist. The windows are smaller than one square foot—designed to let in as little cold (and consequently as little light) as possible. Two shovels are propped up against the outside wall. A workbench, cupboard, and bunk are all that remain. Yet the struggle against the environment and the hardship of mining can be readily felt.

Disappointed Klondikers also worked their way back to the Birch Creek diggings. Samuel Dunham of the United States Department of Labor predicted that Mastodon and Mammoth Creeks would eventually produce as much gold as any ten miles of the Klondike. Because of an even distribution of gold, an output extending over a long period of time, and the employment of large numbers of men, Dunham felt that these mines would produce greater economic benefit to Alaska than the phenomenal production of the Klondike. [37] By January 1, 1899, Circle City had recovered its population of 800 people, including Lieutenant Richardson's military camp. But by September all but the army had bolted to Nome.

The impact of the massive movement of people during the Klondike gold rush had a profound effect on the three tribes of Han Indians, especially the two groups adjacent to the booming communities of Eagle and Dawson. Not only did the Indians confront the white miner on the Yukon but on every stream, valley, even mountain ridge. No other Athapaskans ever experienced anything similar. [38] White men's tools proved more efficient than the aboriginal, most remarkably the fish wheel and the repeating rifle. The Han's traditional shelters, the moss house and niibeeo zhoo, gave way to log cabins and canvas tents. Furthermore, the Indians found their territory governed by two political systems, American and Canadian. The gold rush not only accelerated acculturation but destroyed the few remaining vestiges of traditional culture. Every facet of Han culture suffered serious impact. [39]

Overall the backwash from the Klondike stampede resulted in great exploration of the Alaskan Yukon. During the three and a half years of the Klondike rush, the Alaskan Yukon placers produced nearly $2 million. [40] A few settlements flourished briefly until drained by news of the latest strike. This pattern would be repeated several times. After each new stampede, disenchanted miners would return to the old, slow but steady diggings of the Alaskan Yukon. These miners of the Klondike frontier had been tempered and trained by it. They learned that the trail to gold in the north was unforgiving and could involve the forfeiture of their lives. They accepted the bitter lesson that the commercial companies were undependable. Paying more than $1,300 yearly in food, shelter, and equipment, they had to pack the 1,500 pounds to the mines on their backs. [41] If the mines failed to produce, the miners were stranded, dependent upon the charity of these same commercial companies. As miners they faced disappointment, starvation, hardship, and isolation. Yet many stayed on to search for the next bonanza and, in so doing, made the country an easier place to live for those who followed.