Yukon Settlement Essay Research Paper Yukon SettlementBy

Yukon Settlement Essay, Research Paper

Yukon Settlement

By: Randy Bonds Jr

Email@ randyboy3@hotmail.com

The Yukon area of Northwestern Canada and Alaska was settled in

the early 1900’s . The gold rush of 1896 through 1900 was a major

contributor to this settlement. Though the terrain is rugged and cold, many

of the prospectors who came in search of the illusive yellow metal found

riches beyond their wildest dreams. Others found homes and places of

business in a country they truly loved. Some flourished and others barely

scraped by, but they all served as a necessary start to the civilization of the

area. Towns began and grew steadily throughout the rush, and a few still

persevered to the present day. This and the people of the gold rush became

factors that settled the great north, and gave the Yukon River the privilege

of being the lifeline of the North.

The gold rush had a very simple and humble beginning, but served as

an awesome part of the settlement of the area. “In the summer of 1896,

three men were working along Rabbit Creek, a small tributary of the

Klondike River. George Carmack, a white “squaw man” married to an

Indian, and his two Indian companions, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie,

had been fishing for salmon that summer. The fishing had been poor and

they’d turned to cutting timber which they intended to float down river to

Forty Mile. Bending down to scoop drinking water from the stream,

Skookum Jim discovered gold flakes scattered in the sand along the

bottom.”(Anderson, 42)

“By gentleman’s agreement, prospectors who made a strike were

obliged to pass the news of the discovery to other prospectors. After

claiming seven 500-foot claims along the banks of Rabbit Creek (Soon to

be renamed Bonanza), Carmack and Charlie boarded a log raft for Forty

Mile, leaving Skookum Jim to guard their find.”(Anderson, 42)

“Filing claims and announcing their discovery at Forty Mile, they

galvanized the miners who promptly headed upstream as fast as they

could go. Within days, the town was all but deserted. By mid-September,

prospectors had staked every inch of Bonanza Creek as well as it’s smaller

tributaries and were taking out gold that ran $25 to $50 per pan and

occasionally as high as $500 per pan.”(Anderson, 42-43) They are no

exact numbers as to how many prospectors were involved that far, but the

fever would take time to reach to the rest of the world.

The trip into the rich North was often began at Chilkoot Pass, the

start of a long journey through many perils. “For centuries, powerful and

wealthy Tlingit natives controlled the Chilkoot Trail, an inland trade route

that meandered undisturbed from Pacific water into the headwaters of the

Yukon River. Then, in 1897, the trail’s silence was replaced by the din of

thousands as the news spread from Seattle to San Fransisco to New York:

Gold! Gold in the Klondike!

The gold seekers, looking for the cheapest and quickest passage to

the Klondike, quickly discovered that the 33-mile inland passage would

take them from the now-defunct town of Dyea, Alaska to Canada’s Lake

Bennett and the headwaters of the Yukon River. From the lake, they could

raft the remaining 400 miles to Dawson., where streams where reportedly

“busting with gold.” But soon they discovered that the route to the

Klondike was ponderous, and the Chilkoot Trail was far more formidable

than they imagined.” Heimbuch, T1)

With the onset of winter, difficult living conditions became nearly

impossible, but the lure of gold drove them onward. Subsisting on flour,

beans, and sometimes smoked salmon, many of them contracted scurvy.

They were sickly and ridden with lice. Home was a hastily constructed

hut, lean-to, or tent, filled with smoke and icy cold. Burrowing into the

frozen ground, miners built fires to thaw the gold-bearing gravel then

piled it in clumps to be panned out in the spring. But the hardships paid

off for some of these first Klondikers. They struck it rich beyond their

wildest dreams. The average claim that winter produced about $600,000,

and several topped the 1 million mark. (Anderson, 43)

The Yukon River was and is a major source of transportation in the

North, its ultimate source is the Nisutlin River, a tributary of Teslin Lake.

The Yukon initially flows northwest in Yukon Territory, past Whitehorse,

Carmacks, Fort Selkirk, and Dawson; its main tributaries in this section

are the Big Salmon, Pelly, White, Stewart, and Klondike rivers. The

Yukon then enters Alaska, where it flows west across the state for 1265

miles before emptying through a large delta into the Bering Sea. (Encarta)

The Yukon is navigable by shallow-draft commercial vessels as far

upstream as Whitehorse. Known to Russian fur traders as early as 1831, it

was an important transportation route in the la

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