QUARANTINE BLOG # 509

August 21, 2021

Circle City became the first city to rise into wealth and descend into a ghost town during the Alaska Gold Rush. By 1896 – three years after its founding – it had a music hall, 2 theaters, 8 dance halls, and 28 saloons. It was known as “the Paris of Alaska.” By 1896 it had 1,200 citizens. 

In 1893, its first year Circle City had no jail, no courthouse, no  lawyers, and no sheriff, nor was there lock or key in the community. It had no taxes and no banks except the saloons, where men kept their money. It had no priest, doctor, church, or school, but it had prospectors with Oxford degrees who could recite Greek poetry. 

Circle City had its greatest year in 1896. The gold-production that season had exceeded $1,000,000 ($65 million today) and prospecting lots were selling for $2,000 ($50,000) apiece. 

But before that winter was out the “Paris of Alaska” would be a ghost town. Rumors began about an almost unbelievable event on Bonanza Creek, and miners left for the new strike. The next act in the drama of the Klondike was under way.

On August 16, 1896, an American prospector named George Carmack, an ex-Marine, his Tagish wife Kate Carmack, her brother Skookum Jim, and their nephew Dawson Charlie made a discovery, registered their claim and news spread rapidly throughout the Yukon River valley.

By the end of August, all of what came to be called Bonanza Creek had been claimed by miners. A prospector then advanced up into one of the creeks feeding into Bonanza, later to be named Eldorado Creek. He discovered new sources of gold there, which would prove to be even richer than those on Bonanza. And the Klondike stampede was on.

The Klondike stampede was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to reach the Klondike goldfields, of whom only around 30,000 to 40,000 eventually did. It lasted from the summer of 1897 until the summer of 1898. It began with newspaper reports on July 15, 1897 in San Francisco when the first of the early prospectors returned from the Klondike. The press reported that a total of $1,139,000 ($74 million) had been brought in by these ships, although this report proved to be an underestimate.

The publicity around the gold rush led to a flurry of branded goods being put onto the market. Clothing, equipment, food and medicines were all sold as “Klondike” goods, allegedly designed for the north-west. Stoves that wouldn’t sell the year before, sold out quickly.

There were Klondike glasses, boots, cigars, medicines, soup, blankets and stoves. Some unusual offers included a special Klondike bicycle – “ice bicycles” – a wind-powered “boat sled”, and an X-ray gold detector designed by Nikola Tesla.

Most of the prospectors traveled over the mountain ranges into Canada’s Yukon Territory, and then down the river network to the Klondike.

Few phenomena have been as well-documented by photographers as the rush to the Klondike. The most powerful image of the Klondike gold rush is evoked by a single scene – a solid line of men, forming a human chain, hanging across the white face of a mountain rampart. Each man is bent almost double under the weight of his burden, straining upward toward the skies.

Of the thousands who attacked the Chilkoot that winter, none profited more than the natives. They went to work as packers. They worked for the highest bidder, ran their own informal union, refused to labor on Sundays (all were strict Presbyterians), and continued to raise their fees as the fervor of the rush increased. 

Sometimes they would fling the pack of an employer into the snow and go to work for another who offered more money. Sometimes they would stop in the middle of the trail and strike for higher wages. They would not accept folding money, for an early prospector had cheated one of them by paying him in Confederate bills.

About halfway up the grade the stampeders reached Sheep Camp, so named because it had once served as headquarters for hunters seeking mountain sheep.

There were seldom fewer than 1,500 people in Sheep Camp, along with 15 “hotels,” most of them simple huts. The best known was the Palmer House, named after its owner, a former Wisconsin farmer. He had come so far, with his wife and seven children, and, having only $8 left, had gone no farther. Now, in a one-room dwelling, he was making a fortune. They fed 500 people a day and slept 40 of them each night, jamming them so tightly together on the plank floor that it was impossible to walk through the building after nine in the evening. But, until freeze-up, the Palmer House did boast running water: a brook rippled through one comer of the building.

From Sheep Camp the last place where a climber could rest was known as The Scales because everything was weighed here. Thousands of tons of outfits, half hidden by the ceaselessly falling snow, were piled here, waiting for their owners to gather stamina for the supreme effort of the last climb.

As the first winter progressed, two men hacked steps out of the ice wall – the last 150 feet of climb. They collected more than $80 ($2,000) a day in tolls, and then, after six weeks, took the money, went on a spree, and blew it all. Others came after them, cut more steps and charged more tolls until there were 1500 steps – the Golden Stairway – cut in the mountainside.

The next three photographs show Chilkoot Pass, then and now.

RCMP ListThe RCMP required each stampeder to equip himself with a specific list of food, to be lugged by hand over the mountains. It took the average man three months to shuttle his ton of goods across the pass. 

Once over the top, prospectors built rafts or boats that would take them down the Yukon to Dawson City in the spring. 7,124 boats of varying size and quality left in May 1898. The river posed a new problem, with several dangerous rapids along the way.

After many boats were wrecked and several hundred people died, the North-West Mounted Police  introduced safety rules, among them, any boat carrying passengers required a licensed pilot. Rather than pay, some prospectors simply went ashore, and let their boats drift unmanned through the rapids with the intent of walking down to collect them on the other side.

Next week Big Alex, the Queen of the Klondike, and the end of the gold rush.

👉  Today’s close, “Calling on the Powerful Name of Jesus,” is by Kristine Brown.

“When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’” (Mark 10:47)

There are many times in life when I get caught up in all that’s going on around me. It feels like I’m amid a sea of people, each voice distracting me from the peace and joy I know is available through Christ. I believe Jesus is right there with me, willing to bring peace to my situation. But I lose focus on him and instead let myself get lost in the crowd.

A man named Bartimaeus knew what it was like to focus only on Jesus in a crowd of chaos. Born blind, this man chose to tune out all the happenings around him and the voices pulling his attention away. He did the one thing we should all learn to do when we have a need – call on the powerful name of Jesus.

Jesus’ name “is above every name.” It is so powerful that every knee will bow to it and every tongue will acknowledge Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:9-11).

Bartimaeus didn’t give in to distraction. He kept calling, even when people tried to silence him. We shouldn’t let people or circumstances discourage us from calling on Jesus, any time we want. He is always there for us, ready and willing to meet our needs.

Jesus would not be deterred when one of his children called. He paused and turned toward Bartimaeus. Mark 10:49 says, “When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said, ‘Tell him to come here.’” Then in verse 52, we are given an incredible example of what happens when we choose his name above all else. “And Jesus said to him, ‘Go, for your faith has healed you.’ Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road.”

Jesus responded when Bartimaeus called his name, and he will do the same for us today. Just like this man’s story, let’s allow Jesus to be the focus of our story, today and every day. Let’s pray by calling on the powerful name of Jesus.

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