Collections

Klondike Seattle's exhibits and collections reflect the rich and diverse stories of those who participated in the Klondike Gold Rush. The gold scales pictured above belonged to George Washington Carmack, discoverer of the Klondike gold fields.

NPS photo

Museum Collections

Klondike Seattle's museum collections are largely comprised of gold mining tools and equipment, diaries, journals, and other items from stampeders on their way to and from the goldfields. Some highlights of the collections include:

- The Hielscher Collection, a cache of one man's fascinating experiences in the Klondike donated in his traveling steamer trunk
- Bronze statue, "The Sourdough," donated by the Alaska Yukon Pioneers fraternal organization
- Daily journal kept by Robert Moran while he personally saw to the delivery of 12 steamboats to the mouth of the Yukon River in 1898
- Sleeping bag prototype and its 1898 patent certificate
- A set of gold scales used by George Washington Carmack

For more information on Klondike's collections, please contact Brooke Childrey, museum curator, at 360-569-6784.

 

Final clean up at a Klondike mining operation

Additional Resources:

Search through various databases to find genealogical information, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other resource information:

- Genealogical resources

 

This proposed design for a city seal illustrated the spirit of determination that characterized Seattle in 1897

Museum of History and Industry, Seattle

"The stores are ablaze with Klondike goods; men pass by robed in queer garments; ... teams of trained dogs, trotting about with sleds; men with packs upon their backs, and a thousand and one thing which are of use in the Klondike trade." - The Seattle Daily Times, 1897

For in-depth information about Seattle during and after the Klondike Gold Rush view the online version of Hard Drive to the Klondike: Promoting Seattle During the Gold Rush. This out-of-print publication was prepared for the National Park Service as a historic resource study for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in November 1998.