Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1910 — THEKLONDIKEREVISITED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THEKLONDIKEREVISITED

IT is over a dozen years since the news flashed round the globe that gold In immense quantities had been found amid the snow and ice of the Yukon territory, on the border of far-away Alaska, and adventurous spirits hastened from every quarter Into the bleak and inhospitable land whose very name had been till then unknown to the vast majority. Gold, indeed, had been found there for many years, but the phenomenal wealth of Bonanza creek was only revealed In 1896, and it was not till the summer of 1897, when a steamer load of happy miners—every one of whom had “struck it rich” and bore with him a fortune in dust and nuggets—arrived at Seattle, that the world awoke to the fact that another great goldfield, rivaling those of California and Australia, had been discovered. Klondike, Yukon, Bonanza, Eldorado these magic words were on all men’s tongues in the closing years of the nineteenth century, and extravagant though the reports were that trickled over the long and perilous path lying between the frozen fastnesses of Klondike and civilization, the reality far surpassed the wildest estimates of the first prospectors, and eventually It became certain that the new gold-field was the richest ever known in the history of placer-mining. For this was not another Rand, where without expensive machinery and unlimited capital the earth could not he made to yield an ounce of gold. This was the poor man’s gold field, and he needed but a pick, a shovel, and a pan to place him on the road to fortune. To get there was the only difficulty, for one had either to make the long and costly Journey via the mouth of the Yukon upstream to the diggings, or land at Juneau or Dyea, surmount the dangerous Chilcoot or White passes, and then travel through the line of lakes t<s the head waters of the Yukon, and so downstream to the newly-founded Dawson City—already .a flourishing town of 4,000 inhabitants. Now Dyea is deserted. Gold Output of the Yukon, Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice awaited those who won through to the Klondike. In the first season the few pioneers took 11,500,000 out of Eldorado creek alone, arid claims were selling for $500,000. A single “pan" of "dirt” —two shovelfuls of earth—was known to yield SSOO, and $l5O and S2OO pari? were plentiful. Men could earn sls to S2O a day In wages, and «t that figure labor was scarce, and an attempted reduction was speedily followed by a strike. By the last year of the century the population of the Yukon territory had grown to 30,000, and the annual gold yield to $20,000,000, though the recovery of the precious metal was carried on under pe-

culiar difficulties. The ground being frozen solid, it had to be thawed out by huge fires before the dirt could be excavated, and this was the work that could be done during the long apd severe winter. The actual extraction of the gold by washing was only, possible during the three summer months. When the gold' fields of California were discovered and the stories of their unlimited wealth heralded throughout the world, there was a wild and woolly rush to the shores of the Pacific. In those days it was almost an impossibility to get the worst of a venture to its coast. Starvation was almost out of the question, save In the northern and mountainous districts, and a comfortable bed could always be found on the hillside of the land of eternal summer. There were no huge ice and snow fields practically destitute of bird and beast. On the contrary, there were streams full of fish, anxious to be caught, and forests Inhabited by flocks of birds that have since acquired reputations for high prices in city eating houses. Again, the argonauts of California and Nevada were almost exclusively hardheaded, painstaking and sober-minded men, who were willing to brave hardships and privations providing they ultimately obtained independence.

Frozen Up In Winter. The Yukon river is absolutely closed to travel save during the summer moHths. In the winter the frdst king asserts his dominion and locks up all approaches with Impenetrable Ice, and the summer Is of the briefest. It endures only for ten or twelve weeks, from about the middle of June to the early part of September. Theri an unending panorama of extraordinary picturesqueness is unfolded to the voyager. The banks are-fringed with flowers, carpeted with the all-per-vading moss or tundra. Birds count less In numbers and of Infinite variety of plumage sing out a welcome from every tree top. Pitch your tent where you will In mldsumriier, a bed of roses, a clutnp of poppies and a bunch of blue bells will adorn your camping. But high above this paradise of almost tropical exuberance giant glaziers sleep In the summit of the mountain wall, which rises, up from a bed of roses. By September everything is changed.. The bed of roses has disappeared before the icy breath of the winter king, which sends the thermometer down to 80 degrees below freezing point. The birds fly to the southland, the white man to his cabin, the Indian to his hut and the bear to his sleeping chamber in the mountains. Every stream becomes a sheet of ice, mountain and valleV alike are covered with snow. The Klondike Today. From 1900 the production gradually diminished as the crude methods of tho Individual miner became Ineffectual with the exhaustion of the richest areas on the Bonanza and Eldorado creeks, which between them have yielded over $50,000,000. In 1907 the output had dropped to $3,000,000, and for the following year it was even .smaller, but this did not mean that the gold field was worked out. The fact was that placer mining had given way to hydraulic and dredging “propositions” in the hands of wealthy companies, and the vast areas acquired by them were unproductive pending equipment for operations on a large scale with modern appliances. Work is now in full swing, and every scrap of earth In the auriferous creeks— l right down to bed rock—lb now being put through the dredging machines and washed for gold, the dredger plowing its way steadily from one end of the valley to the other, while the hydraulic machinery deals with the soil on the hill Bides. Science, indeed, has swept away the romantic side of gold-mining in the Yukon, but through Its agency the territory is entering oh a fresh period of prosperity, which may yet rival the heyf-ey of Its glortt ous past

1.-Town of Grand Forks in the Heart of the Mining District. 2.—Spot Where Gold Was First Discovered. 3.—Hydraulic Mining In the Yukon.

THE YUKON GOLD-MINING COUNTRY