HARD DRIVE TO THE KLONDIKE:
PROMOTING SEATTLE DURING THE GOLD RUSH

A Historic Resource Study for the Seattle Unit of the
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park

Mid-Twentieth Century Interpretations

Various anniversaries of the gold rush prompted popular examinations of what it meant to Seattle. At the 40-year mark, for example, an article by Irving Sayford in Travel reflected on how the stampede increased the city's prosperity. Written in an enthusiastic, hyperbolic tone that would have won Brainerd's approval, the article portrayed the Klondike Gold Rush as "the greatest treasure hunt in the annals of the western world." Sayford portrayed the importance of the gold strike in the Yukon as follows:

[Seattle], founded on the Northern fisheries industry and its commerce, overnight shot up through municipal adolescence and became a gangling, boisterous, delighted, bawdy and infelonious landlord to transients twice the number of its permanent inhabitants. It was faced with the job of feeding the hordes, bedding them, entertaining then, while they were outfitting themselves in the town and shouting for ships to take them away from there to the Northland to hunt gold!

With a heavy dose of exclamation points, Sayford's article conveyed the excitement of the stampede, depicting it as a romantic, colorful event that profoundly affected the city. "No municipality ever changed more suddenly than Seattle," he concluded. Moreover, in his estimation, it was the Klondike Gold Rush that "put Seattle on the map." [7]

Two years later, Archie Binns's history of the Port of Seattle echoed these sentiments. His book, Northwest Gateway, published in 1941, celebrated Seattle as the "Gateway to Gold" during the Klondike stampede. Unlike Bagley, he devoted an entire chapter to the topic. "The city roared, and the waterfront roared," he wrote. With embellished prose reminiscent of nineteenth-century accounts, Binns informed readers that "in dull streets all over the United States, and farther away, men heard the blaring of the master calliope and the roll of golden chariots. The great parade was happening at last and it was forming in Seattle." [8] In addition to leaving the impression that the gold rush was a noisy event, Binns's book portrayed it as being significant to the city's development.

The 50-year anniversary further rekindled interest in the gold rush. At that time, The Seattle Times Magazine carried a series of articles describing how "the city went mad" during the gold rush. Although the author acknowledged the hardships of mining, for the most part the stampede was portrayed as a great adventure that began in Seattle. [9]

Like Binns, Murray Morgan devoted an entire chapter to the stampede in his well-known history of Seattle, Skid Road. First published in 1951, this book credited Brainerd with "making Seattle the main port of the Klondike and Nome gold rushes." Morgan, alert to interesting and colorful details, conveyed the story in a manner that appealed to a wide audience -- and his book underwent numerous printings. In an exaggerated style, he portrayed the economic benefits that the stampede brought to Seattle: "Every business prospered. Real-estate values boomed. Papers increased their circulation. Anyone who owned or could lease a ship, no matter how old, no matter how unseaworthy, could find passengers." Significantly, Morgan's chapter on the gold rush ends with Seattle's transformation to a metropolis. "The city's dominance of the region was secure," he concluded. [10]

Even scholarly examinations assumed a tone of enthusiasm that was missing from works produced 20 and 30 years earlier. In 1944, Calvin F. Schmid, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, described the Klondike gold strike (which he placed in Alaska) as "momentous." [11] Alexander Norbert MacDonald's lengthy dissertation on Seattle's economic development, completed in 1959, also included the stampede as an event important to the prosperity of the city. "The impact of the gold rush in the Klondike was quickly apparent in Seattle," he wrote. "Everything boomed." MacDonald cited Seattle newspaper articles to support this expansive statement. [12]

Yet nineteenth-century newspapers also included information to the contrary. Buried in reports on Seattle businesses, for example, were peevish statements from merchants who did not realize the profits that they had been led to expect during the gold rush. By 1898, one business that lost $5,000 had become "sore on Seattle." [13] Although this kind of information appeared only occasionally in newspapers bent on promoting the city, it provided a broader perspective, indicating that "everything" did not "boom." Many mid twentieth-century interpretations avoided this point, choosing to emphasize the more successful, glamorous stories of the gold rush. In any case, in an article in 1968, MacDonald approached the topic more cautiously, writing "it seems reasonable to conclude that the rush of the 1890s helped establish Seattle as the dominant city on Puget Sound." [14]