Canadian History with Clarence McPhee: the Birth of the Yukon

Good evening and welcome to Canadian History, where the body's in the details. I'm your host, Clarence McPhee. After the California Gold Rush urged westward migration in the 1850's, the discovery of gold in Canada's Yukon Territory motivated the settlement of the northernmost reaches of the North American continent from 1897 to 1899. Ever since Thomas Edison had come to the West Coast with his wind-up camera, it seemed that California had run out of gold, turning unemployed men into 'stampeders', blindly moving north, heads burning with gold fever. If they managed to survive the mob rule of Skagway, Alaska, they came to the foot of a thirty kilometer high glacier. Just when they were ready to form a human ladder, the Mounties showed up and ordered them to add a ton of supplies to each backpack. This made the task of digging the bodies of avalanche victims out of the snow even more arduous as they struggled up the glacier, making sure the man in front had plenty of salt. When they got to Dead Horse Trail, they'd lost over half of their original number. They took out their frustration on the horses, leaving a frozen, mutilated carcass behind them every thirty feet or so. But that wasn't the end. When they reached the shores of Lake Bennett, they faced treacherous waters in rafts roughly improvised out of fallen trees. Only a handful of the stampeders made it to Dawson. If they would have delayed their original departures by a fortnight, they all could have traveled the whole way comfortably by rail. By 1898, Dawson was a boom town. At Bonanza Creek, a fiddler and a guitarist were hired to play lively jigs as the prospectors gleefully stood side by side and scooped rich gold deposits out of the Eldorado River with their shovels. Everyone got so rich that the saloons and the brothels were open around the clock. Then Thomas Edison showed up with his wind-up camera to record the event and the gold started to run out. By 1899, he owned the whole Eldorado River and was undertaking the development of a giant, steam powered gold vacuum, against which it was impossible to compete with human hands. The prospectors headed home penniless, their prematurely aged faces ravaged by scurvy, with only the memory of their fleeting wealth to comfort them. That must be what they get for abusing those poor horses. And that's it for another edition of Canadian History. I'm Clarence McPhee.
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