Riches, adventures and opportunities amid the Klondike gold rush, starting in 1896, caught the public’s attention across North America and beyond. Big dreams and naked ambitions outpaced common sense and careful planning.
“The lure of gold in the Klondike had been short-lived, but what an incredible adventure it had been,” writes J. Clinton Morrison in his concise history, Chasing a Dream, Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike (2004, Summerside, Canada, Crescent Isle Publishers, 256 pages).
While making a few people wealthy, gold fever caused suffering or death for many more. “Most gold-seekers spent more than they earned, often ruining their health in the process.”
“Few individuals found the search for gold in the Klondike easy. For most stampeders, the overland trek to the Klondike was nothing short of hell, and the drudgery of wrestling the gold from the wilderness stream beds was its reincarnation.”
Frenzied by talk of gleaming wealth, fortune seekers rushed to Alaska and the Yukon Territory. “Few people had any realistic conception of what the northern wilderness was like, but the lure of gold was hypnotic and thousands immediately threw all caution to the wind….”
“An experienced prospector who had returned to Seattle from Skagway and Dyea… advised that no attempt should be made to reach the Klondike before spring. The miners camped at the passes were the craziest crowd of men he ever saw ‘outside of the lunatic asylum’, and he believed that not more than one in twenty would get through.”
Even animals suffered for the humans’ gold fever. “…most of the animals died on the trail due to a combination of factors: the would-be prospectors were inexperienced in handling horses and mules, the trail conditions were nothing short of deplorable, and there was a scarcity of animal feed. Witnesses swore that the animals’ misery was so great that occasionally they flung themselves over the cliffs in suicidal relief from the agony.”
Readers easily become fascinated when gliding through Morrison’s informative paragraphs. Sometimes he’s a little over-zealous: “The spectacular Klondike gold rush flashed across the historical scene like a celestial meteor, and just as suddenly plummeted into oblivion.”
As an historian, Morrison pays attention to the “academic” extras like footnotes and a bibliography. But he’s a populist. Although delivering the necessary facts, dates and statistics, he prefers anecdotes and human-interest angles.
“Most vessels pressed into service during the peak of the gold rush were anything but comfortable. They were draughty, cold and slow and frequently also unsanitary and overcrowded…. Sometimes horses and cattle were housed above the passengers’ cabins and animal excrement and urine seeped onto the living quarters below.”
Morrison localizes by following the gold-seekers from Prince Edward Island, his home province in Canada. Even so, Chasing a Dream holds a mother-lode of stories, details and descriptions to enthrall any history buff.
“The scarcity of food and the resulting rise in prices made it practically impossible for the average miner to receive proper nourishment. Hard work, exhaustion, crude living conditions and poor food led to the inevitable consequence – the spread of illness and disease.”
Useful illustrations -- maps, photos and drawings – enhance the author’s solid work. Evidently, historical photos are more plentiful than Klondike gold nuggets. An artist, John Burden, adds impressive drawings.
Morrison, a retired teacher, has written other books too. They include: Strange Tales and True Stories, East Coast Chronicles From Yesterday’s Newspapers; and Hell Upon Earth, A Personal Account of Prince Edward Island Soldiers in the Great War, 1914-18.
Other historians have written bulkier books about the Klondike gold rush. But few tell the story, or assess its origins, effects and implications, better than Morrison does.
Approval rating: 77 per cent.
(June 19, 2008)
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