Page 59 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Alaska

THE HIST OR Y OF ALASK A  57

Capturing the popular imagination, the Gold Rush was
Women travelers such as Edith Van Buren well represented in prose, poetry, and movies. Charlie
(left) and Mary Hitchcock ushered in a Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), with the Tramp as a gold
new phase of Klondike history – while prospector in the Klondike, portrayed the harsh conditions
prospectors struggled to reach the faced by the prospectors.
goldfields, they sailed up the Yukon into
Dawson as tourists in 1898. Tents served as home to prospectors in
the northern wilderness, and tent cities
sprang up around major discoveries.

Gold Rush literature includes
the works of Robert Service (see
pp200–201). Known as the “Bard
of the Yukon,” Service immor­
talized this era with his poetry,
which includes “The Spell of
the Yukon,” “The Cremation
of Sam McGee,” and “The
Call of the Wild,” which
are popular even today.

Gold Panning
In the river valleys of Interior Alaska and the Klondike,
prospectors staked claims and set up operations to
extract placer gold, particles of gold found in alluvial
or glacial deposits concentrated in wilderness
streams. Early prospectors used little more than
shovels and gold pans, while others set up simple
water-powered dredges.

Gold Rush mining
tools were usually
basic, and included
sluice boxes, gold pans,
pickaxes, and shovels.
Modern placer miners
use gasoline dredges to
process the gravel.

After the Gold Rush, most prospectors returned
home penniless, having squandered their riches
on frontier vices. By the 1920s, seams began to
play out, and although the World War II ban on
gold mining was lifted in 1946, postwar inflation
made mining unprof itable. Operations such as
Independence Mine (see pp90–91) began closing
down, leaving derelict mines and dredges
strewn across Alaska.

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