Mildred Hendricks

Hendricks Photo Collection, Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve Archives

Quick Facts

Significance:

Gold Mining Camp Storyteller

Place of Birth:

Butte, Montana

Date of Birth:

01/28/1898

Place of Death:

Seattle, Washington

Date of Death:

06/25/1986

Place of Burial:

Seattle, Washington

Cemetery Name:

Crown Hill Cemetery

Living in Seattle in the 1920s, Mildred Curtis likely never thought of gold along Alaska's Yukon River. "Mil", as she was known to her friends, grew up in Butte, Montana to English immigrant parents. After her marriage to Al Hendricks in 1927, and the birth of their son Al Jr. a few years later, the young family began a new life with an unusual move to Alaska during the Great Depression. Al had gotten a job working as a dredge operator at Coal Creek, and invited his wife and young son to join him.

Missing her friends and family back home, Mildred wrote over twenty letters to the Lower 48 over next four years, telling of her life at Coal Creek and Walker Fork gold dredges. Life in remote bush Alaska was hard, and Mildred tells of the challenges of raising a family and of being one of the few women in a male-dominated gold camp.

Go to the Mildred Hendricks webpage to read the eight excerpts from her various letters, along with Hendricks family photographs, that tell the story of her perspective of life at Coal Creek in the fall of 1936 and winter of 1937.