The Koyukuk River, which flows from the borders of the Arctic Ocean, gathering many mountain tributaries, to enter the Yukon at Nulato, was also prospected in 1892, '93 and '94, and indications of good placers have been discovered there, but the northerly, exposed and remote situation has caused them to receive little attention thus far.
THE KLONDIKE.
During the autumn of 1896 several men and women, none of whom were "old miners," discouraged by poor results lower down the river resolved to try prospecting in the Klondike gulch. They were laughed at and argued with; were told that prospectors years ago had been all over that valley, and found only the despised "flour gold," which was too fine to pay for washing it out. Nevertheless they persisted and went at work. Only a short time elapsed, when, on one of the lower southside branches of the stream they found pockets of flakes and nuggets of gold far richer than anything Alaska had ever shown before. They named the stream Bonanza, and a small tributary El Dorado. Others came and nearly everyone succeeded. Before spring nearly a ton and a half of gold had been taken from the frozen ground. Nuggets weighing a pound (troy) were found. A thousand dollars a day was sometimes saved despite the rudeness of the methods, but these things happened where pockets were struck. Probably the total clean-up from January to June was not less than $1,500,000. The report spread and all those in the interior of Alaska concentrated there, where a "camp" of tents and shanties soon sprang up at the mouth of the Klondike called Dawson City. A correspondent of the New York Sun describes it as beautifully situated, and a very quiet, orderly town, due to the strict supervision of the Canadian mounted police, who allowed no pistols to be carried, but a great place for gambling with high stakes. It bids fair to become the mining metropolis of the northwest, and had about 3,000 inhabitants before the advance-guard of the present "rush" reached there.
Hundreds of claims were staked out and worked in all the little gulches opening along Bonanza, Eldorado, Hunker, Bear and other tributaries of the Klondike, and of Indian River, a stream thirty miles south of it, and a greater number seem to be of equal richness with those first worked. All this is within a radius south and east of 20 miles from Dawson City, and most of it far nearer. The country is rough, wooded hills, and the same trouble as to water is met there as elsewhere, yet riches were obtained by many men in a few weeks without exhausting their claims.
So remote and shut in has this region been in the winter that no word of this leaked out until the river opened and a party of successful miners came down to the coast and took passage on the steamer Excelsior for San Francisco. They arrived on July 14, and no one suspected that there was anything extraordinary in the passenger list or cargo, until a procession of weather beaten men began a march to the Selby Smelting works, and there began to open sacks of dust and nuggets, until the heap made something not seen in San Francisco since the days of '49. The news flashed over the world, and aroused a fire of interest; and when three days later the Portland came into Seattle, bringing other miners and over $1,000,000 in gold, there was a rush to go north which bids fair to continue for months to come, for one of the articles of faith in the creed of the Yukon miner is that many other gulches will be found as rich as these. One elderly man, who went in late last fall and with partners took four claims on Eldorado Creek, told a reporter that his pickings had amounted to $112,000, and that he was confident that the ground left was worth $2,000,000 more. "I want to say," he exclaims, "that I believe there is gold in every creek in Alaska. Certain on the Klondike the claims are not spotted. One seems to be as good as another. It's gold, gold, gold, all over. It's yards wide and deep. All you have to do is to run a hole down."
One might go on quoting such rhapsodies, arising from success, to end of the book, but it is needless, for every newspaper has been full of them for a month.
One man and his wife got $135,000; another, formerly a steamboat deck-hand, $150,000; another, $115,000; a score or more over $50,000, and so on. These sums were savings after having the heavy expenses of the winter, and most of them had dug out only a small part of their ground.