by Rich Mole
The next morning, when the previous night’s euphoria had faded away, the question remained: who was going to stake the initial, or discovery claim? They reached a compromise. Carmack would stake and record the claim but assign Skookum Jim half interest. That done, the men discussed other claims. Carmack staked No. 1 below the discovery, from the base of hills on either side of the creek, as regulations stipulated. No. 2 below the discovery was staked for Tagish Charlie, and No. 1 above the discovery was Skookum Jim’s. Carmack notched a section out of a nearby spruce tree and printed a claim notice on the tree’s exposed white surface:
To Whom it May Concern:
I do, this day, locate and claim, by right of discovery, five hundred feet running up stream from this notice. Located this 17th day of August, 1896.
G.W. Carmack
CHAPTER
4
Bonanza
George Carmack had been in gold country long enough to know what he had to do immediately after the claims were staked. Carving a notice on a tree was not enough. He had to formally register their claims. All three wanted to go, but Carmack persuaded Skookum Jim to stay at the creek to ward off anyone who might happen by. Soon, Carmack and Tagish Charlie were poling down the Yukon River to Fortymile. First thing in the morning, they would visit the registration office.
Not long after the pair reached the little mining settlement, news of their discovery on Rabbit Creek changed the lives of every man and woman who lived in the Yukon territory—almost overnight.
Bill McPhee’s Saloon, Fortymile, Yukon
August 1896
George Carmack gulped down his first drink and motioned to the bartender for another. Clarence Berry picked up the bottle and poured the whisky carefully into Carmack’s shot glass. When saloon owner Bill McPhee had agreed to take Berry on as bartender, Berry had told himself that the job would be merely temporary. Berry and his new wife, Ethel, had arrived from San Francisco only a few short months ago.
Berry thought about how he and Ethel had ended up here together. After spending two unsuccessful years in the Yukon with his brothers, Berry had returned to his fiancé to tell her some bad news. She would have to wait a while longer before they were married. But Ethel was becoming impatient and frustrated. It was bad enough that she had to convince her parents that Berry was still the man for her, gold or no gold. Now, she had to convince the man himself that it was now or never! In Clarence Berry’s mind, postponing the wedding until he made his strike was the right thing to do. But not in Ethel’s mind. The right thing to do was to get married right away.
Ethel’s parents wondered why Berry couldn’t find work closer to home. However, conditions were dire. Economic hardship continued to beset thousands of people all over the country. Everyone, it seemed, was dissatisfied and restless.
No one could predict what might happen to Berry if he went up north again. Ethel knew where she wanted to be. She wasn’t afraid of the wilderness. Robust and buxom, Ethel knew she had the right physique for roughing it. So when Berry left for the Yukon in the spring, she was right there by his side. Their honeymoon was one to remember.
After meagre showings during an initial five-week prospecting trip when the couple first arrived, Berry and his brother, Fred, had given up for the season. In Berry’s estimation, the Fortymile creeks, already worked steadily for nine years, were pretty well played out. So were Berry’s funds. After the next spring breakup, he and Ethel would leave the motley collection of tents and log buildings that dotted the spit of land at the junction of the Yukon and the Fortymile Rivers and start prospecting elsewhere. Until then, the steady work at the saloon would enable them to purchase the outfits they would need.
Compared to prospecting, saloon work was easy and warm. In addition, Bill McPhee’s was a good place to be if you wanted to stay on top of events. Clarence Berry listened closely when liquor or dance-hall girls loosened the tongues of prospectors on their sprees. This way, Berry would hear the news firsthand. For instance, he was listening when George Carmack slammed down his empty glass and turned to face the crowd in the large room.
“Boys, I’ve got some good news to tell you,” Carmack shouted over the babble of voices and sharp clack of billiard balls. Faces turned his way and the room grew quiet. “There’s a big strike up the river.”
“Strike, hell,” came an impatient retort. “That ain’t no news. That’s just a scheme of Ladue’s to start a stampede up the river.”
“That’s where you’re off, you big rabbit-eating malemute!” Carmack yelled. “Ladue knows nothing about this.” With a flourish, he held aloft the shotgun shell. Grinning, he stepped over to the gold scales and upended the container. A golden stream poured out. “How does that look to you, eh?” he challenged.
Boots thumped and chairs scraped as McPhee and the others gathered around the scales. Some sneered. The prevailing wisdom was that only fools believed George Carmack or that fast-talking Joe Ladue. Still, to those who figured they could tell gold’s place of origin simply by its colour and texture, the pile of dust and nuggets was intriguing. This wasn’t gold from Glacier, Miller or other Fortymile creeks. It didn’t look like gold from the Stewart River or Indian River, either. It was gold from Rabbit Creek, Carmack announced. More skepticism followed. Joe Ladue had prospected there years before and come back empty-handed.
Derisive laughter turned to excited speculation. Clarence Berry caught Bill McPhee’s eye. Berry talked low and quickly into the saloon owner’s ear. McPhee sighed but nodded. If Berry needed a grubstake, McPhee would extend it. Berry might be just another fool, but he was an honest one. If things went bad, McPhee was confident that Berry would work out his debt behind the bar.
* * *
The claims registration office was not actually situated in the settlement of Fortymile itself, but inside the nearby NWMP post, Fort Constantine. It was named after the same Charles Constantine who had entered the Yukon to reconnoiter the area and determine what force of policemen would be necessary to safeguard lives and property. The summer before, Constantine and a small contingent of policemen had been hard at work constructing the most northerly military establishment in the British Empire. The site of the post was no accident. Its presence just across the mouth of the Fortymile River was a reminder to all the prospectors who lived and worked in the area’s most important gold creeks that Canadian law and order had arrived in the Yukon.
* * *
George Carmack and his two Native companions poled across the mouth of the Fortymile in eerie silence. Beaching their raft, they paused in front of the gates of the post and looked down the riverbank toward Healy’s store. Cudahy was deserted, much like the settlement across the river. In the darkness of the previous night, every prospector who could find a boat had poled up the Yukon to the Klondike River. Overnight, Fortymile had become a ghost town.
Inside the NWMP post, Inspector Charles Constantine listened intently to the claims recorder’s story of Carmack’s visit, angled his cloth cap above his right eyebrow and walked out of the office. Ramrod straight, he strode across the post’s unnaturally quiet quadrangle. He had to see government surveyor William Ogilvie immediately to discuss this new development. In a day or two, when all of the prospectors came back downriver to register their claims, there would be no time to discuss anything. Nevertheless, he wanted a few minutes alone to collect his thoughts. A shotgun shell full of gold didn’t mean much, but Carmack’s story might. Was it true? Everyone else obviously believed it. The place was deserted. That fact made truth irrelevant.
William Ogilvie was not a happy man. Constantine couldn’t blame him. Ogilvie’s years of painstaking work to pinpoint the exact location of the border had finally culminated in the confirmation of the position of the international boundary on the Yukon River. The rich creeks around Fortymile appeared to be in Canadian territory. Now, Ogilvie desperately wanted to go home to his family in eastern Canada. Spring floods ended that notion. Next, Ogilvie received a fateful letter. A join
t commission had been formed to finalize the creation of an international boundary, and Ogilvie had been duly appointed its Canadian representative. He was to remain in Fortymile to “await further instructions.” Predictably, instructions had not yet arrived. The summer was all but over. In a few weeks, it would be too late for instructions to arrive or for Ogilvie to leave—the river would be frozen solid.
And now, how would Constantine keep the peace? After the Mountie had met with Bishop Bompas and others during his brief visit the previous year, he had recommended a force of 40 policemen be sent north. Ogilvie had disagreed. The Fortymile rush had long since passed, he had argued. Ten men would do. Ottawa compromised and approved 20. If Carmack’s find sparked another rush, as it already appeared to have done, their little contingent would be swamped. For the men who had travelled so far and toiled so hard for less than a dollar a day, quick riches would prove irresistible, and ranks would thin overnight.
Outside the wooden gates, Constantine leaned up against the palisade and stared out at the broad, flat river. The men had worked so hard to build the police post. What if it was located in a place where there was no one left to protect?
* * *
After Carmack’s claim, Clarence Berry and his brother headed to Rabbit Creek. By the time they arrived, many others had already pounded claim stakes into the rocky sand of the creek banks. The Berrys wasted no time in doing the same. The brothers had to walk a good distance past Carmack’s own claim to do it. Below the discovery, every inch of creek bed was already staked out. The first unclaimed spot they found turned out to be “40 Above”—40 claims above the discovery!
When he stood back and looked at his stakes straddling both sides of the creek to the base of the hills, Berry marvelled. Just hours before, this creek had been silent and empty. Now, swarms of men were at work. Before long, claim jumpers would be tossing stakes aside. There was no time to lose. Leaving his brother at the site, Berry hurried down to the Klondike.
A few hours later, after he registered his claim at Fort Constantine, Berry crossed the mouth of the river. He met briefly with Ethel, who was desperate for news. He had registered a claim, Berry told her. Now he had to load more supplies and head back up the creek to start work immediately. Months of toil lay ahead. It was impossible for him to carry everything they needed for the winter. He explained that he would be back soon, and they would discuss what to do next. Ethel watched nervously as her husband pushed off, the overloaded rowboat wallowing in the river.
After their brief stay in Fortymile, George Carmack and Tagish Charlie made their way up the Yukon River, stopping at their fishing camp at the mouth of the Klondike. There was no need for anyone to stay there any longer. They were through with fishing. They gathered up the group and launched their raft into the Klondike River. After thrashing through the underbrush from the Klondike River, Carmack, Tagish Charlie and the rest of their group met Skookum Jim on Rabbit Creek. Skookum Jim proudly showed them 85 grams of gold he had panned from his own claim, which he assumed was now duly registered in his name.
No, the claims were not registered, Carmack muttered. The fees were $15 each and that shell only held $12. No matter: they had up to 60 days to register, he’d been told. What they needed to do now, Carmack continued, was get enough gold out of the ground to pay the registration fees and obtain their winter supplies. The men knew they had no time to lose. They quickly borrowed a whipsaw and began cutting the logs Skookum Jim had felled. The new boards were hammered into sluice boxes, which would be used to separate the gold from mounds of pay dirt.
All along the creek, the future was unfolding hourly. Before the end of the day, more than 20 claim holders met on a nearby hillside to appoint fellow prospector Dave “Two Fingers” McKay claims recorder, using a measured length of rope to define boundaries. The name “Rabbit Creek” was now a joke. The group agreed the creek should be given a more fitting name: “Bonanza.”
Upper Yukon River
August 1886
On the riverbank near his trading post in Ogilvie, Joe Ladue stood in stunned disbelief. After all these years of firing up prospectors with wild tales of discoveries in the area, Ladue couldn’t believe that others were the ones telling him tall tales. Men were streaming out of the cabins that dotted the island, pushing off in anything that floated. Was this the big one? In his heart, Ladue knew it must be so. The rafts and boats racing toward the Klondike River were all the evidence he needed. Rabbit Creek! Who would have guessed? He dashed for his raft.
Ladue’s destination wasn’t Rabbit Creek. Instead, he guided his platform to the swampy ground at the mouth of the Klondike River. The deserted Carmack camp was now a rest stop for prospectors on their way up the Klondike River. The sight reinforced Ladue’s conviction that this was where his own personal “strike” would be made.
“Hey, Joe,” came a breathless shout. “I’m gonna need a house. Got any lumber?”
Suddenly, it wasn’t the stunted trees or the haphazard smokehouse of the fishing camp that Ladue envisioned. Instead, it was a street lined with wooden buildings. He sprinted for the beach. Next, he collared a young prospector and gave him a job on the spot. While Ladue poled his raft back upriver toward his trading post, the young prospector paddled downriver toward Fort Constantine—Joe Ladue had sent him to register something he called a “townsite.”
Back at Ogilvie, Ladue yelled for the staff to load every piece of lumber onto the raft. The boards weren’t doing any good stacked up around the post. They had to get them to the swamp. In the meantime, Ladue ordered people to dismantle the sawmill and float the pieces down the river too. The plan fired the men into frenzied activity. At last, veteran prospector Joe Ladue was going to strike it rich! This time, he wasn’t going to have to pan, dig or sluice gravel to do it.
Bonanza Creek, Yukon
September 1896
Bonanza Creek was still crowded, but now it seemed strangely quiet. Having staked their claims, many men wandered about, morose and depressed. The euphoria had vanished. Some began to drift back to Fortymile, convinced that nothing would come of the creek. Others journeyed farther down the Yukon River to Circle City, Alaska.
“For two bits I’d cut my name off the stakes,” snarled one prospector. Nobody listening nearby had that much cash on them, so he resigned himself to working his worthless dirt. This was the kind of talk Alex McDonald had been hoping to hear. The deceptively slow-moving, swarthy giant from Nova Scotia studied the situation closely. Having been a land buyer for the Alaska Commercial Company, McDonald was quite happy to loiter in the area. He was waiting for the right moment to present an offer on the right property, as he had arrived too late to stake a claim himself.
* * *
For weeks, Robert Henderson had toiled away on Gold Bottom Creek, oblivious to the mounting excitement a few miles away. One day, visitors arrived from Bonanza Creek. Henderson had never heard of a creek called Bonanza. It was the new name for Rabbit Creek, the visitors explained.
“What have you got there?” Henderson asked.
“We have the biggest thing in the world,” one replied.
“Who found it?” Henderson asked, in spite of himself.
“Carmack.”
Henderson threw down his shovel in disgust. Carmack had beaten him! Within a few short weeks, Carmack had stumbled upon the wealth that he had spent decades searching for! When Henderson finally managed to pull himself together, he realized that he had to move fast. When Bonanza Creek was staked out, the nugget-hungry hordes would begin moving down to Gold Bottom Creek—his creek!
Fort Constantine, Yukon River
September 11, 1896
The old visionary from Victoria, Captain William Moore, finished his mail run. He dropped the sacks of mail on the floor of the office and sat down heavily, his mind a whirl. So the big strike had been made—just as he always knew it would be! He had heard the news at Dyea Inlet. As he made his way downriver on the last of his summer mail runs, Moore witnessed th
e frantic activity at the mouth of the Klondike River. Here, Joe Ladue was building a saloon and sawmill at his new townsite.
If Ladue was building a townsite on the Klondike River, Moore would do the same at Skagway. It meant years of seemingly endless jobs—fishing, mail delivery and piloting—were over. He couldn’t wait to break the news to members of the British syndicate. They had hired him to develop the wharf and land in Skagway. They would be ecstatic at the news! The quickest way to Victoria was to board a steamer at St. Michael, Alaska.
One of the sacks of mail that Moore carried contained a letter from Ottawa addressed to surveyor William Ogilvie. Ogilvie read the letter with a sinking heart. The letter reported that the international joint commission formed to establish the final position of the border between Alaska and the Yukon had failed and been disbanded. Ogilvie’s services as Canada’s representative were no longer required. All these months of waiting for instructions had been for nothing! However, the letter brought some welcome news. Ogilvie had been ordered back east. He was leaving the Yukon at last. He prayed the steamer that would take him to St. Michael, Alaska, would arrive at Healy’s trading post before freeze-up.
At the same time, inside his snug log home just a short walk from the post, Inspector Charles Constantine reread his letter to the police commissioner: “There is one thing for certain, unless the government is prepared to put a strong force in here next year, they had better take out what few are now here. The rush in here will exceed any previous year.”
The news of the most enormous gold finds since the Cariboo Gold Rush—perhaps even since the California Gold Rush—would inevitably surface in the South. Constantine was haunted by the fear that lawlessness would overrun the Yukon. Again, he asked himself the question: how could his small band of policeman hope to maintain law and order?
