George Washington Carmack
George Washington Carmack started it all on August 17, 1896, when he co-discovered gold in the cold waters of the Klondike River near Dawson City, Yukon. George Carmack was born September 24, 1860 in Port Costa, California. After his 21st birthday, George enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and sailed to Sitka on board the U.S.S. Wachusett in February 1882. By 1885 George was stricken with gold fever and headed north to Juneau to outfit for a summer of prospecting eventually taking the Chilkoot Pass into the Yukon. George, by 1887, could speak both Chilkat Tlingit and Tagish dialects, and married a Tagish chief's daughter, named Shaaw Tlaa (Kate), and later had a daughter named Graphie Gracie. In August of 1896, Georgealong with co-discovers Skookum Jim Mason and Tagish Charlie, staked a claim on the richest creek in the Yukon. In July of 1899, George and Kate depart for California, and by 1900 would sever his commitment to Kate and marry another woman. George worked several more gold claims and dealed in real estate in his later years, he would die at age 62 in 1922.
References:
Wilkie, Rab and The Skookum Jim Friendship Centre. Skookum Jim: Native and Non-Native Stories and Views About His Life and Times And the Klondike Gold Rush. March 1992 Yukon Tourism Heritage Branch.
Johnson, James Albert. George Carmack: Man of Mystery Who Set Off the Klondike Gold Rush. Epicenter Press. Canada 2001.
Kate Carmack
Born Shaaw Tlaa, a Carcross-Tagish woman of the Dakl'aweidi clan in Southern Yukon, sister of Skookum Jim. After her first husband and daughter died of influenza, she was asked to marry her late sister's husband, George Washington Carmack, who would refer to her as 'Kate'. Kate would follow her husband around Tagish, Dyea and Fortymile, operating trading posts and mining claims. She bore a daughter in January 1893, named Graphie Gracie. Kate would be a member of the original party consisting of her husband, her brother and her nephew, finding gold in Rabbit Creek near the Yukon River and setting off the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1899. Kate was never awarded any of the original claim. She would travel with her husband to the lower 48, only to be deserted by George in 1900 and left with no money. Kate and her daughter returned to her family in Carcross in 1901, only to have her only daughter sent for by George in 1909. Kate died poor and alone at the age of 63 due to influenza outbreak in 1920.
References:
Murphy, Claire Rudolf and Haigh, Jane G. Gold Rush Women. Seattle, WA Alaska Northwest Books. 1997
Wilkie, Rab and The Skookum Jim Friendship Centre. Skookum Jim: Native and Non-Native Stories and Views About His Life and Times And the Klondike Gold Rush. March 1992 Yukon Tourism Heritage Branch.
Captain William Moore
Born in Germany in 1822, Captain William Moore had fulfilled an illustrious and dramatic life before he arrived in Alaska in 1887. By the age of 65 years old, the ambitious steamboat captain and his son, J. Bernard Moore, landed at the tidewaters of Skagway and founded "Mooresville", a 160 acre homestead complete with a wharf and a sawmill. Nicknamed, "The Fortune Teller", Captain Moore's intuition of a major Yukon gold strike came true in 1896 and "Mooresville" became a chaotic boom town packed with gold-crazed stampeders. Renamed Skagway, the Moore's homestead was soon over run and eventually the Captain and his son sold out of their Skagway interests and parted ways. Captain Moore retired to Victoria, British Columbia and lived out his years a wealthy man, passing away on March 29, 1909 aged 87 years.
References:
Hacking, Norman. Captain William Moore: B.C.'s Amazing Frontiersman . Surrey, B.C. Heritage House Publishing Company LTD 1993.
Berton, Pierre. Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush 1896-1899. Anchor Canada, a division of Random House of Canada 1972.
J. Bernard "Ben" Moore
J. Bernard Moore, known as Ben Moore, was born in New Westminster, British Columbia on September 6, 1865. As a young man, Ben made multiple trips to Alaska on board steamships bringing miners, traders and store keepers on their way to Fort Wrangell in search of gold. Working for his father, Captain William Moore, Ben spent numerous years on river steamers before arriving at Dyea in March of 1887 and proceeded over the Chilkoot Pass. After founding the "Mooresville" homestead with his father in 1887, Ben worked at the Poindexter's Cannery in the Chilkat valley and in Juneau, Berner's Bay and Douglas in multiple quartz mines and sawmills, before settling with his Tlingit wife and children in Skagway and building the Moore house, which is now used as a museum by the National Park Service. By 1906, Ben had sold his interests in Skagway, and him and his family moved to Tacoma, Washington. Divorced in 1909, Ben died in San Francisco in 1919.
Refrences:
Moore, J. Bernard. Skagway In Days Primeval. New York, NY. Vantage Press. 1968
Cooper, Doreen C. A Century at the Moore/Krimse House. Archaeological Investigations in Skagway, Alaska, Volume 8. U.S. Government Printing Office 2001.
Jack London
Jack London was 21 and unknown when he sailed for the Klondike from San Francisco on July 25, 1897. In his words he "had let career go hang, and was on the adventure-path again in quest of fortune." He landed on the Dyea beach on August 7. He and his companions used a boat to haul their goods six miles up the Taiya River. From there London packed over Chilkoot Pass. He described the agonies and dangers of this effort in his novels Smoke Bellew and A Daughter of the Snows. By August 31 he was over the pass. After building two boats, London and his partners set sail from Lake Lindeman on September 8. By Ocotber 9 London reached the mouth of the Stewart River, 80 miles upstream from Dawson, where he spent the winter. That spring, ill with scurvy, he left for the Outside via St. Michael. He stoked coal on a steamship for passage home. London mined no gold, but his Yukon novels and short stories made him a fortune.
Reference: Klondike Gold Rush NHP Museum Exhibit
