Klondike Gold Rush. Crazy gold rush Earned by overwork

Before the Klondike, mankind was seized by gold rushes more than once. People went now to Australia, now to California, now to the snow-covered Siberia to unearth this precious metal. However, what happened in Alaska is often called the last great gold rush - there was no more excitement of this magnitude. And this whole story began in August 1896, when the Scotsman Robert Henderson landed on Canadian soil. It was he who was to find gold in the Klondike. Moreover, a lot of gold.

Initially, Robert Henderson did not find what he was looking for here. However, he did not give up and continued his search away from the Mount Dome of King Solomon. Many streams flowed from it, one of which was called Rabbit Creek. Having washed the rock, Henderson wondered how much gold was left in the fuzzy sluice. Since it was customary among the gold prospectors to share all the information, the news about the found deposit instantly spread around all local residents. Soon, George Carmack and Jim Skoom's Indian came out on the "hunt". They were the first to set the site on Bonanza Creek and quickly broke Henderson's record. Then people from all over the American continent began to join them.

Gold miners and miners. (wikipedia.org)

But the real explosion took place in the summer of 1897. Before that, it was not possible to take out gold from the Klondike. And when half a million dollars worth of pure metal was hoisted onto the Excelsior ship and brought to the coastal cities, every American man in the street became aware of this. Moreover, the next cargo of more than a ton of metal from the Portland vessel only whetted the appetite: all the newspapers in Seattle were trumpeting about it. And no wonder thousands, no, tens of thousands of people flooded into the Klondike and Yukon.

However, the road to the deposits was extremely difficult. There were three main routes: the shortest, the most popular, and at the same time the most dangerous, ran along the sea, and then through the Chilkut pass; the second is upstream of the Yukon River; the third - along the Canadian rivers and the city of Edmonton. At least 20 thousand people crossed the Chilkut Pass when the gold rush peaked in 1897-1899. The winter in those parts is very cold, and few passed the numerous crossings in the mountain gorges without being hurt. At the end of the journey, the city of Dawson awaited the weary travelers, where all the roads led and where gold prospectors, prostitutes, gamblers and adventurers flocked.

Gold miners cross the Chilkut pass. (wikipedia.org)

All life in the Klondike was concentrated in the city of Dawson. It turned into a capital for gold miners. The city itself grew up around the site of Joseph Ladou. The finder built a hut and warehouse for himself, naming the settlement after the famous geographer George Dawson, who studied the local gold deposits. Soon the village grew into a full-fledged city with a special economy and management system. For example, due to an acute shortage of provisions, a cow could cost as much as 16 thousand dollars, and salt was equal in price to gold. But the noble metal has turned into the cheapest commodity in the world!

The government of Canada became interested in the gold rush. And it is not surprising, because citizens of neighboring America came to the Yukon and Klondike in whole parties. In addition, they preferred to use American stamps, and this could not but cause concern among the Canadians - suddenly Washington decides to take the entire Yukon River basin. The boundaries were very blurred, and therefore the Canadian authorities formed a separate district, the territories of which were not tied to the meridians, as is customary, but to the areas of gold mining. So the Canadians were able to establish laws in places where fever raged.

Moreover, whole squadrons of the so-called North-Western Mounted Police arrived here. Their units not only monitored the observance of order on the ground, but also warmly welcomed the miners, collecting customs duties from them. Nevertheless, the seekers were allowed to trade in gambling and prostitution. Thanks to the mounted police, the Klondike gold rush has been called the most peaceful and calm in history.

Gold rush card. (wikipedia.org)

In Dawson itself, democracy reigned - power belonged to the inhabitants. They themselves decided how to manage the settlement and how to punish criminals for theft and other violations. The mines are covered with golden rivers. As you know, the Klondike flows into the Yukon, and that flows further to the sea, crossing the American border of Alaska. On both sides of the border there were areas of seekers.

The Canadian regulatory system that pervaded this dominion was built on rigorous rigor and British Columbia's gold mining experience. Only the Commissioner for Gold enjoyed great influence, while the American system turned out to be freer and was not limited to a list of unbreakable laws. Former miners from California came to Alaska, where they also found a lot of gold in their time and where the traditions of self-government were established. Important decisions were taken by majority vote at general meetings. According to the stories of the participants in the gold rush, the Circle City settlement existed normally without a court or prison.

Camp on the Yukon River. (wikipedia.org)

Klondike fever has left its mark on history and culture. According to the most modest data, about 200 thousand people took part in it, but only an insignificant part managed to put together capital. The main phase of gold mining ended in 1899, and outbreaks occurred in Alaska for another ten years. The events of the end of the century aroused indignation in the Russian public as well. The ruling Romanov Dynasty was reproached for the fact that Alexander II was practically for nothing to the United States, having missed the opportunity to get rich.

Original taken from amarok_man in Klondike Gold Miners. A photo

In September 1896, the most famous California gold rush in history began. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not necessary to mine it - it is enough to know how to lure nuggets from the pockets of miners.

On September 5, 1896, the steamer Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were a hundred prospectors from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a hard drive case, completely filled with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and largest gold rush in history.

The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold was found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. Missionaries and fur traders were the first to notice the precious metal in local rivers back in the 1840s, but remained silent. The first - out of fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of the Indians who have just converted to the new faith. The second - because they considered the fur trade a business more profitable than gold mining.

Still, in the early 50s, the first prospectors appeared on the Fraser River in British Columbia. They were few: the mines here were not very rich, and besides, the gold rush in California was in full swing. But as stocks dwindled in California, the migration of miners intensified. With varying success, they explored the channels of Canadian rivers, gradually moving north, to the border with Alaska.

Even the first mining towns appeared. First, Forty Mile is a settlement on the bend of the river of the same name and the Yukon. When the gold was found a little further north, many of the miners moved to the new village of Circle City. They mined a little gold here, but still managed to arrange their life. Two theaters, a music salon and 28 saloons were opened here for a thousand and a half inhabitants - that is, a saloon for about every 40 people (!).

A wave of prospectors .

The measured life of British Columbia miners was violated by George Carmack. He found deposits of gold that the people of Circle City had never dreamed of. When in November 1896 the news of new deposits reached this city, it was empty in just a few days. All went to the future capital of the gold rush - Dawson.

I must admit they were lucky. Winter was beginning, there was no connection with the "mainland", no one could come to the Yukon or leave here, and wide circles of the American public learned about new gold deposits only next summer. Thousands of prospectors got the opportunity to mine gold in the most fertile areas for six months without worrying about competitors.

The real gold rush began only after these miners brought their gold to the "mainland" at the beginning of summer. On July 14, 1897, the steamer Excelsior entered the port of San Francisco. He flew from Alaska. Each passenger had gold dust in their hands in the amount of $ 5,000 to $ 130,000. To understand what this means in modern prices, boldly multiply by 20. It turns out that the poorest passenger on the flight had $ 100,000 in his pocket.

And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, Portland, entered the port of Seattle. It had 68 passengers on board and a ton of gold belonging to them. “It's time to go to Klondike Country, where gold is as abundant as sawdust,” the city's newspaper The Seattle Daily Times wrote the next day.

And there was a chain reaction. Dozens of ships went north. By September, 10,000 people left Seattle for Alaska. Winter put the fever on pause, but already next spring more than 100 thousand fortune hunters traveled along the same route.

Hundreds of miles to dream

Of course, few people understood what he was doing. The easiest route to the Klondike looked like this: several thousand kilometers across the ocean to Alaska, then crossing the Chilkut pass a kilometer high, a queue of several thousand people. Moreover, it was possible to overcome it only on foot - pack animals could not climb the steep slope. Additional difficulty: in order to avoid starvation, the Canadian authorities did not allow them to cross the pass if the prospector did not have at least 800 kg of food with him.

Further - a crossing over Lake Lindeman and 800 km of rafting along the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Out of more than a hundred thousand who sailed to Alaska, no more than 30 thousand made it to the gold mines. Of these, at best, several hundred made a fortune on the gold mined.

But there were almost more people who actually made money on the prospectors. They didn't wash gold. They realized earlier than others that they can earn money not by biting into the permafrost in search of nuggets, but by luring these nuggets out of the pockets of miners for scarce services.

The power of foreboding .

A native of New York, John Ladue, out of inexperience, also tried the profession of a prospector. Tried to wash gold in North Dakota. When the idea turned out to be a failure, he turned to sales agents. In 1890 he came to British Columbia as an employee of the Alaska Commercial Company. To avoid competition, he opened a trading post (in other words, a small store with a warehouse) in the very wilderness - at the mouth of the Sixty Mile. The nearest prospectors worked 25 miles from his store - on the Forti Mile River. But Ladya lured the prospectors by not selling them, but giving away inventory for free in exchange for a promise to pay for it as soon as the client finds gold.

When the first news from the Klondike came, John was one of those closest to the mines Carmack had found. He arrived there with the first prospectors. But unlike them, he staked out not gold-bearing areas, but 70 hectares that no one needed at the mouth of the Klondike River. He brought food supplies there, built a house, warehouses and a sawmill. This is how he became the founder of Dawson Village. When the gold rush hit the area, everything under construction in Dawson was being built on Ladu land. After a few years he returned to New York as a millionaire

In terms of prudence, only one more person can compare with John Ladu. Retired captain William Moore bought land in Skagway Bay ten years before the gold rush began. A former sailor, he noticed that this is the only place for a hundred miles where the fairway allows large ships to approach the coast. For ten years he and his son slowly built a pier, warehouses and a sawmill in Skagway. Moore's calculation was simple: the prospectors explore all the rivers to the south, which means that someday they will get to these places.

The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and the farm of William Moore turned into a large city at that time.

2000 rubles for scrambled eggs.

Still, the biggest fortunes on the Klondike fever were made by those who understood the mechanisms of trade. In the midst of the golden boom, commodity prices in Dawson and other prospecting communities were not only high, they were fabulously high.

Start with what it cost to get to Dawson. Indian porters, in the midst of the fever, charged $ 15,000 at current prices to carry a ton of cargo across the Chinkuk Pass.

For clarity, we will continue to operate with today's prices. A boat that allowed rafting 800 miles across the Yukon could not be bought for less than $ 10 thousand. The future writer Jack London, who found himself in the Yukon in the summer of 1897, earned money by helping to guide inexperienced miners' boats through the river hummocks. For the boat, he took godly - about $ 600. And over the summer he earned $ 75 thousand. For comparison: before leaving for the Klondike London, he worked at a jute factory and earned $ 2.5 per hour. That's $ 170 per week and 2300 for three months. That is, thirty times less than on the hummocks of the Yukon.

Jack London economy.

In general, according to the stories of Jack London, one can easily study the economy of the Klondike. The heroes of his autobiographical stories sell elk meat for $ 140 per 1 kg, buy beans for $ 80. When Little Kid - the hero of the book "Smoke and Little Boy" - manages to get some cheap sugar, he is surprised at the seller's pliability: "The freak asked for only $ 3 per pound." And this is no less than $ 150 per 1 kg. $ 83 per kg Smoke and Kid pay for spoiled brisket to feed their dogs. Eggs cost in Dawson and other prospecting communities from $ 20 to $ 65 apiece. The price of a kilogram of flour in the most remote villages reaches $ 450! In the story "Race", the Kid buys for almost $ 4,000 a worn suit from someone else's shoulder, which does not even fit him in size, and justifies himself in front of Smoke: "It seemed to me that it was remarkably cheap."

Of course, the prices can be explained by the difficulties of delivery to godforsaken areas. But greed and monopoly played their part, of course. So, the supply of food to Dawson was almost completely controlled by one person - the Canadian Alex MacDonald, nicknamed Big Alex. A year after the start of the gold rush, Big Alex's fortune was estimated at $ 5 million, and he himself received the title of "King of the Klondike."

Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started out speculating in clothing and then switched to whiskey and shoes, selling rubber boots for $ 2,500 a pair. And she also became a millionaire.

Moreover, these people were not pioneers. Enterprising people knew how to make money on the gold rush for a long time. A few decades earlier, when the fever swept California, the first millionaire was not some guy with a pick and a shovel, but the one who sold these shovels to guys. His name was Samuel Brennan, and he was in the right place at the right time.

Alcoholic mormon .

The bigamist, adventurer, alcoholic and head of the San Francisco Mormon community, Samuel Brennan, is among other things "famous" for the phrase: "I will give you the Lord's money when you send me a receipt signed by him."

And it was like this. In the midst of the California gold rush, many Mormons came there. Religion obliged them to give God a tenth of their earnings. The tithe of the reclaimed gold was brought to Samuel by the Mormon prospectors. And he was obliged to transport him to Utah, to the headquarters of the church. But no parcels with golden sand came from California. When it was hinted to Brennan from Utah that it was not good to appropriate the money of God, he replied with that very phrase about the receipt.

Intoxicated in the literal sense of the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors embarked on a wild revelry, tried to outmaneuver each other with their licentiousness

By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day the discoverer of Californian gold, James Marshall, came to see him - then still a modest shepherd and owner of a small shop. He found gold a couple of months earlier, but kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid in Brennan's store with golden sand. And to prove that gold is real, he confessed where he found it.

The pastor used the situation to his advantage. Over the next few days, he bought all the shovels and other household utensils around. And then in his newspaper he published a note that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store is the only one on the way from San Francisco to the mines, which means that the miners will pay what he requests. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $ 500, which he bought for $ 10. For a sieve, which cost him $ 4, he asked for $ 200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years have passed, and he is no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California State Senator.

However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, being ashamed to send him a tithing receipt, found another way to remind him of justice. Several risky financial transactions and a scandalous divorce bankrupted California's first millionaire. He met old age, sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.

Prospectors-spenders

Most of the miners ended their lives in about the same way. Even having washed up millions on the rivers of the Yukon, they could not cope with their passions. Saloons, brothels, casinos - the service industry knew how to get money out of their pockets.

The writer Bret Harth, famous for describing the life of miners, tells of a man who, having sold his land for profit, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. Witnesses of the gold rush in Australia in their memoirs shared memories of characters who lit up in local pubs pipes from five-pound bills (this is like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid the cabbies in handfuls of golden sand.

This attack did not bypass Russia either. The gold rush was not as spontaneous as in America, mining was controlled by the state, but all the same, the income of even hired workers in the gold mines of the Urals and Amur was dozens of times more than that of an ordinary peasant. "Intoxicated in the literal sense of the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors embarked on a wild revelry, trying to outmaneuver each other with their licentiousness," we read in Mamin-Sibiryak's "Siberian stories from the life of mine people". - During the usual half-hour afternoon tea, pounds of very expensive tea and huge heads of sugar were thrown into a pot of boiling water. Expensive imported clothes and shoes were worn for one day, after which everything was thrown away, replaced by a new one. A simple peasant put 4 thousand rubles each. on the card and, not at all embarrassed, lost this amount, which in reality represented a whole wealth for him, with which he could perfectly furnish his agriculture and live comfortably all his life.

Feverish economy

In the essay "The Economy of the Klondike," Jack London sums up the gold rush. In two years, 125 thousand people came to the Klondike. Each was carrying at least $ 600. This is $ 75 million. Jack London also estimates the work of the miners. He sets a "fair price" for the working day at $ 4 per day. The bottom line is this: in order to earn $ 22 million (and this is the entire price of gold mined at the Klondike), the miners spent 225 million. Most of these million ended up in the pockets of enterprising people who knew and understood how to make money on human passions.

Photo of the Klondike and its inhabitants:

Gold prospectors and miners climb a trail across the Chilkut Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush

Dawson was the center of gold mining in Alaska.

On August 16, 1896, on the Bonanza Creek, which flows into the Klondike River in Alaska, prospectors George Carmack, Jim Skokum and Charlie Dawson discovered a scattering of gold nuggets. This moment is considered the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush - the disorganized mass mining of gold in Alaska in the late 19th century.

The systemic development of Alaska by American colonists began only seven years after this icy peninsula was bought by the United States from Russia. In 1874 Jack McQuesten and Alfred Mayo founded the trading post of the Fort Reliance Alaska commercial company near present-day Dawson.

The company traded furs and tools for miners for a percentage of the gold found in the future. Despite the fact that at first no gold was found, the trade continued. That changed when gold was discovered on the Stewart River in 1885.

Faced with a small boom, the company closed its fur trading branches and focused on goods for the miners. Although the gold on the Stewart River ran out quickly, prospectors found it on the Fortimile River even before that.

The Fortimile River (Forty Mile) is named after its distance from Fort Reliance - it flows into the Yukon 40 miles downstream. The gold discovered here led to the emergence in the winter of 1887 of Forty Mail, the first city in the Yukon.

In 1895, $ 400,000 worth of gold was mined in the Fortimile and Sixtimile areas (60 miles upstream). By that time, about 1,000 gold miners lived in Fort Mail. Surprisingly, in addition to saloons and shops, the town had a library and a Shakespearean club, an opera house with a troupe from San Francisco and a tobacco factory. It was in this settlement that the Canadian office for the registration of gold mining sites was located.

But soon Forty-Mail had a competitor. Gold was found in Alaska in Birch Creek County. The new city of prospectors was called Circle City, as it was located exactly on the Arctic Circle. Many prospectors left Forty Mile to move to Circle City. However, business has not yet reached a real golden boom.

Its prerequisites appeared after the famous prospector Robert Henderson went in search of gold to the Klondike River, which flows into the Yukon. On the northern bank of the Klondike, he discovered several streams, and in one of them (Rabbit Creek) he had accumulated a significant amount of gold. The prospector called this place a "gold mine".

In the summer of 1896, Henderson traveled south to rebuild food and supplies. On the way back he met George Carmack, his wife, a Tagish Indian. Kate Carmack, her brother Jim Skoom and nephew Charlie Dawson. Since the prospector needed helpers, he decided to tell his new acquaintances about the Klondike gold.

Carmack himself was not interested in the news, but attracted the attention of Skokum, who wanted to become a prospector. He persuaded the others, and in the end, Carmack, Skoom and Dawson in August got to the "bonanza".

First they washed gold there, and then they moved downstream, where another stream flowing from the south (Bonanza Creek) flowed into Rabbit Creek. It is still unclear exactly who found the first nugget. Each of the participants told their own version of what happened. But it is known for sure that this famous piece of gold was found on August 16, 1896. It weighed about a quarter of an ounce and cost $ 4 at those prices.

Looking closely, the prospectors found a large scattering of nuggets at the bottom of the stream and rushed to collect them. Soon they completely filled the hard drive case with gold. It is not surprising that the stream was later named Eldorado.

The prospectors staked out the plots and went to Forti Mile, where they were to register them. At first, the office of the company simply did not believe Carmack. True, the distrust vanished immediately when he showed the amazed clerks the gun case stuffed with gold.

The rumor about gold spread around the entire community of Alaska miners with lightning speed, and by September the entire region of streams in this place of the Klondike was staked out - there was no free land there at all. Carmack himself produced $ 1,400 worth of gold in less than a month. If converted at the gold rate, then today it is about $ 133,000.

However, it took another year for the information to reach the big light. Gold was not exported until June 1897, when navigation opened and the ocean liners Excelsior and Portland took the cargo from the Klondike.

The Excelsior arrived in San Francisco on July 15, 1897 with a cargo of about half a million dollars, arousing public interest. When Portland arrived in Seattle two days later with an even greater load of gold, it was already greeted by a crowd. Newspapers actively piqued interest by reporting on the incredible wealth of the Klondike. The gold rush has begun.

It turned into a real boom after the results of the report became known on the "mainland" William Ogilvy, who, on the instructions of the Government of Canada, was engaged in geodetic works in the gold-bearing region of the Klondike. According to him, during the winter of 1896-1897, gold was mined in the amount of $ 2.5 million.

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On June 26, 1925, exactly 90 years ago, the premiere of Chaplin's famous film "The Gold Rush" took place. The film, taken 29 years after the outbreak of the Alaska gold rush, largely recreates that historical phenomenon. To make it more plausible, Chaplin even hired 2,500 tramps who waved pickaxes to imitate the work of miners. However, in 95 minutes of screen time, it is impossible to reflect all the details of the life of gold miners. Yes, this was not required, because in the comedy film there is no place for tragedies and collapses of illusions that trapped the miners at every step. And the screen Charlie, fabulously rich and having met happiness in the mines, was a rare exception on the Klondike.

In 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush began - perhaps the most famous in history. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not at all necessary to mine it. On September 5, 1896, the steamer Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were a hundred prospectors from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a case from a hard drive, completely filled with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and largest gold rush in history ...

Let's find out the details ...

Went for salmon, came back with gold

The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold was found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. Missionaries and fur traders were the first to notice the precious metal in local rivers back in the 1840s, but remained silent. The first - out of fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of the Indians who have just converted to the new faith. The second - because they considered the fur trade a business more profitable than gold mining.

Still, in the early 50s, the first prospectors appeared on the Fraser River in British Columbia. They were few: the mines here were not very rich, and besides, the gold rush in California was in full swing. But as stocks dwindled in California, the migration of miners intensified. With varying success, they explored the channels of Canadian rivers, gradually moving north, to the border with Alaska.

Even the first mining towns appeared. First, Forty Mile is a settlement on the bend of the river of the same name and the Yukon. When the gold was found a little further north, many of the miners moved to the new village of Circle City. They mined a little gold here, but still managed to arrange their life. For over a thousand inhabitants, two theaters, a music salon and 28 saloons were opened here - that is, a saloon for about every 40 people!

George Carmack

Any natural disaster - and the gold rush for the overwhelming majority of its participants was precisely a disaster - begins by chance, with some trifle. In early August 1896, three residents of the Canadian state of Yukon, bordering Alaska in the north, went in search of the missing Kate and George Carmack. A couple of days later, they were found at the mouth of the Klondike River, where they were harvesting salmon for the winter.

Then these five people wandered around a bit and came across a rich placer of gold, which simply sparkled in the stream, and it could be collected with bare hands.

On September 5, George Carmack brought a couple of kilograms of golden sand to the village of Circle City to exchange it for currency and necessary goods. Circle City, which was home to about a thousand people, was instantly empty - everyone rushed into the mouth of the Klondike. Exactly the same madness seized the inhabitants of the whole neighborhood. Thus, about three thousand people gathered in the fall of 1896 to mine gold in the places of its richest deposits. It was they who managed to grab the bird of happiness by the tail. Gold lay literally underfoot, and it was possible to collect it without encountering fierce resistance from competitors. In 1896, there was enough gold on the Klondike for everyone.

These lucky ones owed such a lafe to the remoteness of the region from civilization and the lack of transport and information communication with large cities located much to the south in the cold season. These three thousand people, with rare exceptions, have washed many thousands of dollars worth of gold. However, not all of them reasonably disposed of what they had acquired; most of them had golden sand leaking between their fingers.

The decent earned should also include at most one and a half of those who subsequently arrived in the Yukon from other regions of the world, including even Australia. This already had to literally fight for gold. And endure incredible hardships, since they were not adapted to hard work in the harsh conditions of the north.

I must admit they were lucky. Winter was beginning, there was no connection with the "mainland", no one could come to the Yukon or leave here, and wide circles of the American public learned about new gold deposits only next summer. Thousands of prospectors got the opportunity to mine gold in the most fertile areas for six months without worrying about competitors.

The real gold rush began only after these miners brought their gold to the "mainland" at the beginning of summer. On July 14, 1897, the steamer Excelsior entered the port of San Francisco. He flew from Alaska. Each passenger had gold dust in their hands in the amount of $ 5,000 to $ 130,000. To understand what this means in modern prices, boldly multiply by 20. It turns out that the poorest passenger on the flight had $ 100,000 in his pocket.

And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, Portland, entered the port of Seattle. There were three tons of gold aboard the Portland: sand and nuggets in dirty canvas sacks, on which sat, beaming with a weathered smile between their frostbitten cheeks, their rightful owners. After that, the United States of America (and then the rest of the world, civilized and not so) in chorus went crazy. People left their jobs and families, laid their last belongings and rushed north. The policemen left their posts, the carriage drivers left the trams, the pastors left the parishes.

The mayor of Seattle, who was on a business trip to San Francisco, telegraphed his resignation and, without returning to Seattle, rushed to the Klondike. The venerable thirty-year-old housewife Mildred Blenkins, a mother of three children, went out to shop and did not return home: having taken the savings she shared with her husband from the bank, she reached Dawson and sported there in cloth pants, engaged in the resale of food and building materials. By the way, old lady Millie was right: three years later she returned to her family, bringing with her as an expiatory gift of golden sand worth 190 thousand dollars.

“It's time to go to Klondike Country, where gold is as abundant as sawdust,” the city's newspaper The Seattle Daily Times wrote the next day.

And there was a chain reaction. Dozens of ships went north. By September, 10,000 people left Seattle for Alaska. Winter put the fever on pause, but already next spring more than 100 thousand fortune hunters traveled along the same route.

Of course, few people understood what he was doing. The easiest route to the Klondike looked like this: several thousand kilometers across the ocean to Alaska, then crossing the Chilkut pass a kilometer high, a queue of several thousand people. Moreover, it was possible to overcome it only on foot - the pack animals could not climb the steep slope. Horses and dogs on the slope were powerless. True, there were Indians who could be hired to carry at the rate of a dollar per pound of luggage. But that kind of money was found only in eccentric millionaires, who, however, came across more often in the Yukon than in restaurants in Nice. Additional difficulty: in order to avoid starvation, the Canadian authorities did not allow them to cross the pass if the prospector did not have at least 800 kg of food with him. Some swung up and down forty times to carry the load. They crawled so tightly that, having dropped out of the queue, one could wait five to six hours to get back into line. Frequent avalanches buried both people and belongings.

Prospectors overcome the Chilkut pass

Those who overcame Chilkut cut wood, built rafts, boats - in short, everything that kept them and their supplies afloat, and prepared for the last dash along the Yukon River. In May 1898, as soon as the river was free of ice, a flotilla of seven thousand so-called ships set out on an 800-kilometer journey downstream.

Rapids and narrow canyons have shattered the dreams and lives of many: out of 100,000 adventurers who disembarked in Skagway, only 30,000 reached Dawson, at that time a nondescript Indian village. Of these, a fortune was made on the gold mined, at best, several hundred.

Earned by overwork

The statistics of the two-year gold rush that swept both the Yukon and spread to Alaska is very sad. During this period, about 200 thousand people tried to find their financial happiness in the northern regions. Happiness was found, as it was said, 4 thousand people. But those who found death here were much more - according to various estimates, from 15 to 25 thousand.

Adversity began immediately, as soon as the catchers of luck reached Alaska by ship, where it was necessary to overcome the steep Chilkut Pass, which the beasts of burden were not able to master. Here they were met by the Canadian police, who let only those who had at least 800 kilograms of food through. Also, the police limited the import of firearms into the country, so that large-scale battles did not take place in the mines, which threatened to spill over to the south of Canada.

Then there was a crossing over Lake Lindeman, a 70-kilometer off-road crossing and an 800-kilometer rafting down the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Not everyone got to the mines.

A harsh climate with strong (up to 40 degrees) frosts in winter and sweltering heat in summer awaited people on the spot. People were dying from hunger and disease, and from accidents at work, and from clashes with competitors. The situation was aggravated by the fact that a significant number of "white collars" - clerks, teachers, doctors, who were not used to hard physical labor or everyday hardships - came to mine gold. This was due to the fact that America was going through far from the best economic times during that period.

And the work was really hard. After quickly collecting gold from the surface of the earth, it was necessary to shovel the soil. And he was frozen for most of the year. And it had to be heated with fires. During the California gold rush, it was much easier for the prospectors.

The novice writer Jack London, who was forced to leave the University of California due to the inability to pay for his studies, decided to try his luck. In 1897, at the age of 21, he reached the mines and staked out a plot with his comrades. But there was no gold on it. And the future famous writer was forced to sit on an empty plot with no hope of enrichment, waiting for spring, when it would be possible to get out of the regions cursed by providence. In the winter, he fell ill with scurvy, frostbitten, drained all the cash he had ... And we, the readers, were very lucky that he survived, returned to his homeland and wrote great novels and brilliant series of stories.

It must be said that there was not so much reclaimed gold in 2 years of feverish mining for each prospector. On a modern scale, prices are $ 4.4 billion, which should be divided by 200 thousand people. It turns out only 22 thousand dollars.

But one of the most intelligent and sagacious entrepreneurs turned out to be John Ladu. 6 years before the start of the gold rush, he founded a trading post in the north of Canada, supplying all the necessary local residents, as well as miners who at that time mined gold in very modest volumes.

When in September 1896 all the surrounding residents rushed to the mouth of the Klondike to the placers discovered by Carmack, Ladya did not stand aside. But he bought not a gold-bearing area, but no one needed 70 hectares of land. Then he brought food supplies on them, built a house, a warehouse and a sawmill, founding the village of Dawson. When in the spring of next year tens of thousands of fortune-seekers rushed to the mouth of the Klondike, all residential buildings and infrastructure buildings were built on Ladya's land, which brought him huge profits. And very soon Ladya became a multimillionaire, and the village grew to the size of a city with a population of 40 thousand.

Skagway now: a former brothel, now a popular pub

In terms of prudence, only one more person can compare with John Ladu. Retired captain William Moore bought land in Skagway Bay ten years before the gold rush began. A former sailor, he noticed that this is the only place for a hundred miles where the fairway allows large ships to approach the coast. For ten years he and his son slowly built a pier, warehouses and a sawmill in Skagway. Moore's calculation was simple: the prospectors explore all the rivers to the south, which means that someday they will get to these places.

The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and the farm of William Moore turned into a large city at that time.

The gold diggers who were just starting their way to the Klondike had a worse situation. in Alaska. Since the spring of 1898, about a thousand prospectors have passed through Skagway every month on their way to Dawson. Overcrowded villages in southern Alaska have become a haven for thousands of men, languishing in anticipation of their departure north. To entertain this restless public, numerous saloons and brothels have sprung up in Skagway.

Slippery Smith (center) in his saloon. 1898 year

The king of this shadowy world of Alaska was a man called "Soapy". His real name was Jefferson Randolph Smith II. By 1884, "Slippery" was claiming the role of king of the underworld in Denver by organizing bogus lotteries. For excessive claims, rival gangs tried to kill Smith in 1889, but he managed to fight back. It got to the point that Denver City Hall had to repel the attacks of gangsters with guns. Smith realized that his gang would not be able to withstand the artillery, and preferred to move to Alaska in 1896.

"Slippery" was ahead of the main wave of gold prospectors by a year and had time to prepare well for it. He acted in the usual way. In Skagway, he first organized a gambling establishment in the "saloon". Then Smith set up the reception of the telegrams, arranging a poker game nearby, which ended in an almost predictable loss of the sender of the telegram. It never occurred to gullible prospectors that the nearest telegraph pole was hundreds of miles away. Not everyone understood that they had been tricked. And those who understood were in too much of a hurry to see the cherished Klondike to waste time on complaints.

A year later, Smith had strong competitors. In May 1898, under the leadership of Canadian engineers, construction began on the White Pass & Yukon narrow-gauge railway, which was supposed to connect Skagway with the Whitehorse village. "Slippery" realized that the gold prospectors who went from the steamer ladder to the train carriage without delay would not become his clients, but it was not easy to fight the railway company. The gold miners themselves have become bolder. On the evening of July 8, 1898, a meeting of "vigilants" (citizens involved in lynching) was convened in Skagway. Drunk Smith went to this meeting, but he was not allowed there. A verbal skirmish began, smoothly turning into a firefight, during which "Slippery" was killed. The crime kingdom in Skagway has come to an end.

Still, the biggest fortunes on the Klondike fever were made by those who understood the mechanisms of trade. In the midst of the golden boom, commodity prices in Dawson and other prospecting communities were not only high, they were fabulously high.

Start with what it cost to get to Dawson. Indian porters, in the midst of the fever, charged $ 15,000 at current prices to carry a ton of cargo across the Chinkuk Pass.

For clarity, we will continue to operate with today's prices. A boat that allowed rafting 800 miles across the Yukon could not be bought for less than $ 10 thousand. The future writer Jack London, who found himself in the Yukon in the summer of 1897, earned money by helping to navigate the boats of inexperienced miners through the river hummocks. For the boat, he took godly - about $ 600. And over the summer he earned $ 75 thousand. For comparison: before leaving for the Klondike London, he worked at a jute factory and earned $ 2.5 per hour. That's $ 170 per week and 2300 for three months. That is, thirty times less than on the hummocks of the Yukon.

Like soldiers in war, the people of Dawson lived in the present. The owner of the cancan Gertie Diamond Tooth (the entertainment business was going so well that she inserted one for herself) accurately described the situation: “These unfortunate people just itch to get their money down quickly, so they are afraid to give God their soul before they dig out everything that is there still remains. " The pain, despair and icy corpses in the frozen huts got along very well with the chansonettes who stood ankle-deep in nuggets on the Monte Carlo stage. Feral prospectors spent their fortunes for the right to dance with sisters Jacqueline and Rosalind, known as Vaseline and Glycerin.

Of course, the prices can be explained by the difficulties of delivery to godforsaken areas. But greed and monopoly played their part, of course. So, the supply of food to Dawson was almost completely controlled by one person - the Canadian Alex MacDonald, nicknamed Big Alex. A year after the start of the gold rush, Big Alex's fortune was estimated at $ 5 million, and he himself received the title of "King of the Klondike." He not only bought dozens of "applications", but also hired bankrupt miners to work in his mines. As a result, MacDonald earned $ 5 million and received the unofficial title of "King of the Klondike". True, the final of the real estate buyer turned out to be sad. Having concentrated huge plots of land in his hands, MacDonald did not want to part with them in time. As a result, the price of mountains and forests with depleted deposits fell, and the "King of the Klondike" went bankrupt.

Belinda Mulroney

Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started out speculating in clothing - bringing in $ 5,000 worth of clothes to run-out prospectors that sold for $ 30,000, then switched to whiskey and shoes, selling rubber boots for $ 100 a pair. And she also became a millionaire. Having learned about the discovery of gold in the Nome region, the "queen" Klondike immediately moved to Alaska. She was still resourceful and adventurous. The "queen" Belinda did not receive the throne, but she managed to marry a French swindler who declared himself a count. Mulroney's money was invested in the European Steamship Company. "Queen Klondike" lived in London, not denying herself anything, until 1914, when the war led to the collapse of shipping and the ruin of many companies. Belinda Mulroney died in poverty.

Moreover, these people were not pioneers. Enterprising people knew how to make money on the gold rush for a long time. A few decades earlier, when the fever swept California, the first millionaire was not some guy with a pick and a shovel, but the one who sold these shovels to guys. His name was Samuel Brennan, and he was in the right place at the right time.

Samuel Brennan

The bigamist, adventurer, alcoholic and head of the San Francisco Mormon community, Samuel Brennan, is among other things "famous" for the phrase: "I will give you the Lord's money when you send me a receipt signed by him."

And it was like this. In the midst of the California gold rush, many Mormons came there. Religion obliged them to give God a tenth of their earnings. The tithe of the reclaimed gold was brought to Samuel by the Mormon prospectors. And he was obliged to transport him to Utah, to the headquarters of the church. But no parcels with golden sand came from California. When it was hinted to Brennan from Utah that it was not good to appropriate the money of God, he replied with that very phrase about the receipt.

By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day the discoverer of Californian gold, James Marshall, came to see him - then still a modest shepherd and owner of a small shop. He found gold a couple of months before, but he kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid in Brennan's store with golden sand. And to prove that gold is real, he confessed where he found it.

The pastor used the situation to his advantage. Over the next few days, he bought all the shovels and other household utensils around. And then in his newspaper he published a note that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store is the only one on the way from San Francisco to the mines, which means that the miners will pay what he requests. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $ 500, which he bought for $ 10. For a sieve, which cost him $ 4, he asked for $ 200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years have passed, and he is no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California State Senator.

However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, being ashamed to send him a tithing receipt, found another way to remind him of justice. Several risky financial transactions and a scandalous divorce bankrupted California's first millionaire. He met old age, sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.

Most of the miners ended their lives in about the same way. Even having washed up millions on the rivers of the Yukon, they could not cope with their passions. Saloons, brothels, casinos - the service industry knew how to get money out of their pockets. The writer Bret Garth, famous for describing the life of the miners, tells the story of a man who, having profitably sold his land, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. Witnesses of the gold rush in Australia in their memoirs shared their memories of characters who in local taverns lit pipes from five-pound bills (this is like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid cabbies with handfuls of golden sand.

The queue for licenses for gold mining.

Campground on the shores of Lake Bennett. In this place, gold diggers built or bought boats in order to sail further to the Klondike on the water.

Another, already more capital settlement of gold miners.

The shortest, but most difficult route to the Klondike went through the Chilkut Pass with a height of over 1200 meters. The most reckless and hasty overcame this pass even in winter, and at first there were many of them.

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The mining went on all year round. In winter, the frozen ground was hollowed out with pickaxes or heated with bonfires.

Artel of gold miners at work.

A group of prospectors en route to the Klondike.

Perhaps the only ones who really and fabulously got rich on the "gold rush" were dealers, who bought the precious metal from the miners on the cheap. The respectable gentleman on the left poses with the bags of gold he had bought in the previous fortnight. There may be gold in the chests too. Of course, a guard with a revolver with such a still life is far from superfluous.

Left cover of the April 1898 Klondike News magazine with an optimistic forecast of $ 40 million in gold production this year.
And the picture on the right from the English magazine "Punch" for the same year, as it were, warns adventurers that in fact most of them expect on the Klondike.