Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1899 — WIND CITY IS GONE. [ARTICLE]

WIND CITY IS GONE.

Scourge of Scurvy Depopulates an Alaskan Mining Settlement. The news was brought to Seattle, Wash., by the steamer City of Topeka that Wind City, on the Wind river, the third south branch of the Peel, was a scurvy camp during the winter, and that a score of miners have perished. It was late in January when the last report was received from the pest camp by miners crossing the Rocky Mountains on the way to Dawson. These finally got through, with the news. They did not have a list of the dead, but the fallowing were not expected to live when the messenger left: Dr. J. B. Mason, Chicago; W. C. Cuch, San Francisco; Dr. dentist, Chicago; Edward Harris, Mitchell. All were very sick with the dread arctic disease. Harris had to have a leg amputated from freezing, and Mitchell was suffering from a broken leg. The miners were the only ones left in Wind City. They sent out an Indian to secure assistance. He said the men were unable to care for themselves, and that none expected to live. Wind City was started last September, when about seventy-five miners who had been trying to reach Dawson over the Edmonton trail gathered there and built winter quarters. A number of substantial cabins wefit up, and when winter settled down Wind City became a lively place. The whirl of social affairs was varied and interesting. For four months the miners at Wind City had just as good a time as the miners in any other part of Alaska. Nothing went seriously wrong until one morning several of the miners were struck down with the scurvy. They were followed by several others. The pestilence seemed to strike the camp all at once. Soon half of the seventy-five people there were stricken with the disease. Then came the undoing of Wind City. Those of the miners who could move loaded their sleds and turned their cabins over to the less fortunate. With words of good cheer all round, parties set off, one by one, over the snow and ice. Death helped to depopulate Wind City The scurvy seemed to be particularly fatal. The medicine which Mr. Mason had was soon exhausted and when he was stricken down himself he had nothing left to take. There were no vegetables in the camp and no source from which fresh ones could be secured. There is a graveyard at Wind City where the bodies of fifteen or twenty men lie in testimony of the terrible price some had to pay for gold,. In the outlying cabins several dead men have nothing but frozen blankets for their coffins. They died after all the well men left the camp, and there is no one to bury them.