A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park operated by the National Park Service. Like most NPS sites, this was a treasure, albeit a small one.
I knew from the research I did to write my current work-in-progress that Tacoma became a railroad boom town in the 1870s and 1880s after the Northern Pacific Railroad ended its transcontinental railroad in Tacoma rather than Seattle. Then, however, progress in Tacoma slowed because of the railroad’s financial constraints, and the Northern Pacific line to the East was not completed until 1881.
Both Seattle and Tacoma grew through the rest of the 19th century, but it took the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s to turn Seattle into the major city in the Pacific Northwest. By 1900, Seattle’s population was more than double that of Tacoma.
Gold was discovered in the summer of 1896 on the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Almost a year later, in July 1897, the first boatload of gold from the Yukon arrived in Seattle. Gold fever erupted immediately.
By 1897, Seattle already had a strong history of self-promotion. When the city lost the bid for the Northern Pacific terminus, city leaders built a spur line constructed by volunteers. Through the 1870s and 1880S, Seattle developed into a major lumber town and port, while Tacoma depended on the railroad’s financial status.
Seattle promoted itself as the “jumping off” point for miners. Canada soon imposed a requirement that gold seekers take a year’s worth of food and other supplies with them into the frozen Arctic, and Seattle merchants stood ready with lists and goods to outfit prospectors. Seattle journalist Erastus Brainerd advertised Seattle as the best—indeed the only—U.S. gateway to the Klondike. Prospectors from around the world bought into Seattle’s boasts.
The Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park operates a small museum in Seattle’s downtown. It is located in the former Cadillac Hotel, built after Seattle’s downtown fire in 1889. The park offers videos and exhibits which depict the exuberance of the prospectors as they set off for the Klondike gold fields and the treachery of the land they had to traverse to get there.
There were several routes to Yukon Territory, and they could all be deadly—the museum’s films and displays make that clear. I wrote in Now I’m Found about the California Gold Rush and the Forty-Niners. Although travel to the West Coast was slower in 1849 than in 1897, once the miners arrived in the West, the Klondike prospectors had a much more difficult time of it with weather and terrain. Plus, they had to carry their year’s worth of supplies with them, which meant several trips over the same terrain.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, as with its earlier California cousin, those who supported the miners were more likely to strike it rich than the miners themselves. Seattle’s merchants, both those who remained in Seattle and those who went to the Yukon, were among those who benefited most.
The Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park’s center in Seattle is free, and it is worth an hour or two to see. If you can’t get to Seattle, then explore the park’s website.
Would you have gone to the Yukon in search of gold?
