Two Yukon Gold Rush Women by Paty Jager

Wikipedia

My historical western romance novel, Staking Claim, is set during the Yukon Gold Rush. While researching for that book, I picked up many books for references, and one that I found fascinating was Gold Rush Women by Claire Rudolf Murphy and Jane G. Haigh.  The stories of the women in that book helped me get the feel of the life of a woman at that time and place. Here are a couple of the women who intrigued me.

 Anna DeGraff – Was born in Germany and came to America in 1867. She faced many hardships including losing her husband and raising 5 children. A the age of 55 she climbed Chilkoot Pass in spring  of 1894 with a crutch and feet wrapped in rags to find her son who had left in search of gold in 1892. On this journey she carried her sewing machine and a feather bed.  To hike the pass she wore a heavy skirt, layered petticoats, a blouse, warm jacket, cap and heavy shoes. She round the pass both beautiful and daunting.  Along the way she asked about her son.  An October snow storm arrived when she was in Circle City. There she and one other woman in the party brought the town’s count of women to 8 while there were several hundred men.  She went to work making tents for a store and clothing for the miners and dance hall girls. In the spring of 1896 Anna decided to abanodon her search for her son. She sold her sewing machine and traveled to San Francisco. The gold dust she’d been paid for all her sewing amounted to $1,200. 

Bridget Mannion – An Irish immigrant working as a cook for a wealthy family, Bridget was bitten by the Alaska bug while listening to guests at her employer’s dinner table.  She managed to get hired as a maid to the wife and sailed for Alaska the summer of 1892 from Seattle. After having to wait in one of the first Russian settlements on the Yukon River through the winter, they arrived at Forty Mile settlement the summer of 1893.  She loved the frontier community and soon learned class distinctions didn’t matter in a country where you had to depend on one another. She had many suitors but waited for the right man to come alone. She found him in an Irish man who panned $50,000 a month from his mine. She dressed in silks and was no longer a cook. She visited her relatives in Ireland and after several years in Alaska, move to Seattle, and participated in the Yukon Order of Pioneers.  She lived to the age of 92.

Paty Jager writes murder mysteries and steamy romance starring cowboys and Indians.

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Alaska Gold Rush

This was one of the post on my blog tour. In case you didn't make it or find it, here is the info again.  

When the word came out of the Yukon in 1897 that gold had been found, thousands of men headed north. An estimated 100,000 people between 1896-1899 rushed to the Yukon looking for riches.

The American economy had taken a hit. People were out of work and wondering how they would provide for their families.  Some communities pooled their money to send several men form the area to find gold and bring it back to help the community prosper.

The quickest way to Alaska and the Yukon was by ship.  Many left San Francisco and Seattle by ship, heading to Skagway to traverse the Chilkoot and White Pass while others landed in St. Michael and used the Yukon River to transport them into the gold fields.

The all-water route was the favorite for those who liked less physical challenges. The gold seekers would leave either San Francisco or Seattle on a Steam ship and sail to St, Michael on the western shore of Alaska. From there they would go by sternwheeler up the Yukon River to Dawson City.  This journey was approximately 4600 miles from San Francisco to Dawson City. 

In 1897, this route was cut short when winter hit early and froze the river. This is the winter in Laying Claim.

The popular route was from Seattle to Skagway or Dyea, Alaska. This route was shorter, and could take less time if one was physically able to handle many trips up the steep steps cut in the snow on Chilkoot to carry 2000 lbs of supplies required by the NW Mounted Police. The White Pass also required the supplies and if a person didn’t have a pack string or dog sleds to help carry the load, they also had to pack some up to a stop-over, go back, grab more, and pack it up. They made virtually hundreds of trips up and back by the time they reached the summit and packed down to Lake Lindemann from Chilkoot and Bennett Lake on the White Pass trail. 

Both trails had dangerous terrain and back-breaking summits. Many used pack horses on White Pass. It is noted nearly 3000 horses died on that trail.  April 1893 over sixty men were killed in an avalanche on Chilkoot. Bones of horses and abandoned gear still cover the trails.

At Bennett Lake and Lake Lindemann the gold seekers built rafts and boats and floated down to Dawson City on the Whitehorse River. The winter of 1897-98 many who crossed the summits were stranded at the lakes all winter due to the frozen rivers beyond the lake. When the river finally thawed in the spring of 1898 it is reported that 7,100 water crafts hit the water within forty-eight hours. One-hundred-and-fifty of those vessels wrecked at Squaw and Whitehorse rapids before the NW Mounted Police oversaw the navigation of those rapids.

Laying Claim begins January 1898 when so many were stopped by the weather once they hit the Alaska shores. 

photo source Public Domain

The cost of Beans

Typing my fingers to nubbins this week. ;) Today the words accumulated slower because I had to go on a research mission for a bit. My character is heading over the White Pass from Skagway, Alaska into Yukon territory. The Canadian Mounted Police set up a check point at the Canada border and didn't allow anyone beyond that point without either four months rations and $500 or six months rations and $200. This was in 1898. That was a lot of money to carry and the price of the rations if the gold seekers didn't bring it with them was double what it was in the lower 48.

So my goal was to figure out how much my heroine needed to pay for her 6 months supplies. I used a replica 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue to find prices. They even sold food out of these catalogs.

The suggested rations were 400 pounds of flour, 100 pounds of beans, 100 pounds of bacon, 100 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of tea, 30 pounds of coffee and 150 pounds of mixed fruit. Then salt, pepper and cooking sundries.

There were several kinds of flour, I went with the one that was the easiest to figure- $1.48 for a 48# bag. Doubled that to $3 for 50# and my character would pay $24 for the flour. Dry beans were $.03 a lb so double that to $.06 times 100 you get $6 for dried beans. But I figured they were hiking most of the time and wouldn't have time to cook beans so I found a price for canned baked beans.  3# cans were $1 a dozen so figure $2 for a dozen and say they go half and half. Half dried and half canned so the canned beans would cost: so 24 cans of beans would be $4. Bacon was harder to figure. They had it and other canned meats in the catalog. You could get bacon for $.60 a pound so I figured $1.20 in Skagway. Making it $120 and the most expensive item to purchase.  Sugar depended on the price they (Sears & Roebuck)p purchased it for. They didn't give a price in the book. I guessed it at $.40 a pound. Tea was- again depending on what you picked - $.35 a pound, so $.70 for my story. And coffee was $.20 to .35 a pound. Again, I doubled that. and last was the canned fruit. Those ran anywhere from $.08 a can to $.28. And I doubled that.

The total I came up with to purchase the supplies for the trip was around $300, plus they had to have $200 in their pocket. That was a lot of money to have just to get to the Yukon gold country and then risk your life and hope you found gold.

While I think I could have handled traveling across the continent with a wagon, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made a Yukon gold seeker!  Would you have put that much at stake to try and find gold?

3500+ Horses Died from Greed

In 1896 gold was discovered in the Yukon.

Prior to that in 1887 William Moore landed at Skagway Bay and went to work establishing a settlement and discovering an inland route called the White Pass. His rival John Healy had a trading post three miles west at Dyea inlet an area where the natives lived and was the start of a steep pass called Chilkoot over the mountain range and into the Yukon interior.

Chilkoot Pass

When word came out of the interior that gold had been struck, both men knew they would soon be inundated with gold seekers. And the first ship of 200 people, some seeking their fortune in gold others in providing services, landed in the bay. Soon Skagway and Dyea were tent cities with 5000+ people milling about all hours of the day and night.

All the people were in a hurry to get to the gold fields. Many chose Chilkoot Pass. It was shorter by ten miles but it could only be traversed by foot. All 1200 pounds of goods per person, required by the Canadian Mounted Police, had to be hauled over the pass on their backs. This required making multiple trips from station to station. First transporting one load, caching it, and going back to pick up another load. This trail was also the steepest of the two and only navigable by foot.

White Pass also called Dead Horse Trail was forty-five miles long not as steep but just as treacherous with switch backs through boulders, five water crossings,  and a climb of less than a mile that took a person straight up over 300 feet.  The newspapers published misleading information about the trail, saying, while being longer and more time consuming, could be crossed with horses, wagons, or dog sleds.

White Pass

So imagine the dismay of greedy men and women who arrived in Skagway expecting to use a wagon and discover they could not. The trail was so narrow when there was no snow that horses hooves would be caught between boulders on the trail or between rocks in the streams they forded, breaking their legs. If the horses were fortunate to not suffer from a broken leg, the packs were so heavy and lopsided the animal might fall over the edge of the narrow trail into jagged hundred foot precipices. The fortunate horse was put out of their misery. But some avarice fortune hunter's didn't take the time. They just began packing the load themselves.

Also many of the fortune hunters had never handled horses or had little contact with the animals. This inexperience was dangerous. Bad handling of a horse could not only harm the horse but the other travelers packed along the narrow trail.

White Pass- The trail became too narrow for travois

It was said in several accounts they believed some horses committed suicide, stepping off the trail to no longer have to endure the heavy packs and treacherous trail. If a boulder, tree, or avalanche blocked the trail, the poor animals had to stand for hours with the heavy packs on their backs because the greedy men and women who led them up this torturous trail didn't want to waste time taking the packs off and putting them back on.

This trail wasn't kind to humans either, but they made the choice to venture into the Alaskan gold fields the animals did not.

The reason I've been reading all this information is for the book I'm writing. My character, Jeremy Duncan, provides a packing service over the White Pass. His animals are his bread and butter, so you won't see him pushing them to the limit or over-packing them. But the city girl who has paid him to take her to the interior to find
her brother will be appalled by the sights and smells(yes, there were so many decaying horse carcasses along the trail that it became necessary for those traveling the trail to use bandannas to cover their mouth and nose and the drinking water down at the town was no longer safe to drink)

As always when I discover an injustice, I have to include it in my book, hence the thorough research into this trail.

Photos were copied from Wikipedia.