by Rich Mole
CHAPTER
5
Eldorado
On the slope above busy Bonanza Creek, Austrian sheepherder Anton Stander stood with his four companions watching the activity. Stander’s group had been luckier than others. They had managed to stake a claim. Yet, the best ground had already been taken.
Gazing down the creek, Stander noticed what most others already knew but had chosen to ignore. Bonanza Creek actually forked, and the straight southern arm meandered peacefully through a ravine. The five penniless men understood something else: if something good didn’t happen soon, their future was too bleak to contemplate. Nothing much was going to happen for them on the busy Bonanza Creek, they decided, so they packed up and wandered down past the fork. Their decision was to have enormous repercussions.
South Fork of Bonanza Creek
Late September 1896
William Johns cursed his luck. Inside Bill McPhee’s saloon, the former newspaperman had dismissed Carmack’s tale of the big strike. Johns was sadder but wiser now. He and others were camping near Carmack’s claim, scouting around the area. Anton Stander came by to warm his hands and share some coffee. Johns asked Anton where he was working. He said only that his camp was “farther up.” He seemed evasive. The group assumed that Stander meant “farther up on Bonanza” and left it at that.
The next morning, as the group of prospectors panned a creek, they saw one of Stander’s companions. He told the group that they weren’t having much luck. The men resumed their work until one of them noticed something strange about the colour of the river. “Someone’s working farther up,” he said. “The water’s muddy.” Around a bend in the creek, they came upon Anton Stander and his companions. They were all staring at Stander’s pan. When they looked up at the prospectors, Johns remembered later, “They acted like a cat caught in a cream pitcher.” It was too late to continue a silly pretense of disappointing returns, so Stander showed them the gold lying in his pan. The group was suitably impressed. Stander grinned and told them their very first pan had yielded more than $6 in gold. No wonder all five in the party had staked claims! Quickly, Johns and the other interlopers walked down the fork and did the same. Someone jokingly christened the creek “Eldorado.” Early the next morning, as he walked to the claims recorder, another prospector told everyone along the way the happy news of strikes on the new creek.
The prospectors were careful to stake some distance from Stander’s group to avoid any confrontation. However, others didn’t care. For instance, claim No. 7 had already been staked illegally when two men came upon it. They simply yanked out the stakes and substituted their own.
Fortymile, Yukon
Late September 1896
Anton Stander stomped out of the Alaska Commercial Company store and down the muddy trail to Bill McPhee’s saloon. He needed a drink—badly. He was in town to buy winter supplies for his group, and at the moment it looked like he would have to return empty-handed. Standing at the bar, he complained to the bartender about the new Alaska Commercial Company operator. Things had certainly changed since Jack McQuesten had moved downriver to Alaska’s Circle City (he had moved to avoid paying NWMP duties). McQuesten’s replacement did not believe in offering his customers unlimited credit, at least not without a guarantor.
The bartender, Clarence Berry, listened to Stander with more than the usual sympathy. The need for money had put Berry behind Bill McPhee’s bar again. Work on Bonanza Creek had been as expected: long, hard hours crouching in the holes, coughing and choking as the smoky fires thawed the permafrost, followed by back-breaking digging and hauling.
The Berrys were getting a fair return, but soon, as the temperatures plummeted, there would be no running water for the sluice boxes. Gold-washing wouldn’t begin again until spring. Expenses wouldn’t stop, though. Clarence Berry knew that they would eat a mountain of supplies between October and March. Happily, Berry had something Stander didn’t—a paycheque.
However, in the weeks since they had staked a claim on Bonanza Creek, it became obvious that the Berrys lacked something that Stander did have: a claim on Eldorado Creek. As Berry watched the frustrated prospector nurse his drink, he began to formulate a way to help them both. Within minutes, the men were shaking hands on the deal. Berry agreed to act as Stander’s guarantor. In return, Berry would trade half of his Bonanza claim for half of Stander’s Eldorado claim. The two men were partners. Berry hunched that Eldorado would pay off in a big way.
* * *
Twelve sleepless hours after she had last waved goodbye to her husband, Ethel Berry had amassed five tons of supplies. Standing on the wharf near Fortymile, she heard the whistle of the Alaska Commercial steamer Arctic. After supervising the loading, Ethel stepped carefully up the sloping plank to the deck of the crowded little vessel. As the boat churned upriver to the new townsite, Ethel stared up in surprise at a rare sight on the deck above. There was a young white woman standing next to a tall, muscular man. Ducking inside, wincing at the engine’s deafening racket, Ethel made her way up the narrow staircase. She stepped out onto the deck and introduced herself to the couple.
“How do you do,” the short, lithe woman exclaimed, as delighted as Ethel was to meet another lady this far from civilization. “I’m Salome Lippy, and this is my husband, Thomas.”
Eldorado Creek, Yukon
October–December 1896
Land-buyer Alex McDonald sensed the time was right to present an offer on Eldorado Creek. The price of this particular claim certainly was right! The Nova Scotian, known in Antigonish as “Big Moose,” handed the disillusioned landowner a sack of flour and a side of bacon—hardly a big risk—and site No. 30 was his. Shortly after the purchase was concluded, work on the claim uncovered a stunning pay streak that was 12 metres wide.
Others stared open-mouthed. The gold in this particular stretch of ground was clearly worth thousands. As usual, nobody could guess how rich the seam actually was. McDonald moved quickly to buy as many claims as he could. Before long, a hired hand was panning $5,000 in gold a day from the claim.
With McDonald’s newfound riches came an all-consuming objective: the acquisition of as much wealth as possible. McDonald didn’t have a lot of money. No problem. He simply mortgaged his existing claims and delayed payment on new ones.
In a desperate race against the elements, the frenzied activity on Eldorado Creek escalated. The enticing pull of “outside civilization” grew as hours of daylight diminished. The Yukon winter was a fierce, long, lonely ordeal that sent men mad with cabin fever. Poverty-stricken prospectors had no choice but to stay. However, many Bonanza and Eldorado claimholders were no longer poor. George Carmack had already dug out $1,400 by the end of September!
How much gold was enough to make a man leave before the snow flew—$10,000 or $20,000 worth? At very productive No. 16, two Vancouver Island coal miners decided to call it quits at the five-metre level. It was too soon, their third partner decided. He bought their shares for $50,000 each and readied himself to endure the winter.
The Berrys had no intention of leaving. Clarence Berry started burning a shaft down through the clay on the Eldorado claim he now shared with Anton Stander. In early November, Berry reached bedrock. A single pan of pay dirt revealed $57 in gold. None of the Berrys would ever go hungry again. One afternoon, Ethel came up to the claim to call her husband for supper. While she waited for him to emerge from the shaft, she idly picked out $50 in gold from the dirt at her feet.
Quickly, Berry and Stander began hiring men to haul dirt up to the surface and pile it for the spring “clean up” that would surely yield enormous riches. Paying their growing number of employees was easy. Each day, they handed them a few of the nuggets they dug out of the ground. However, keeping employees was a challenge.
“Some men won’t stay to work at any wages when they see the ground,” Clarence’s brother, Frank Berry, complained.
“Aren’t you satisfied?” Frank had asked a man who had decided to quit.
“Yes, I’m satisfied with you, but I won’t work for any man in a country where there is dirt like this,” he replied. He promptly went up the hillside and began sinking a hole of his own.
All the while, Ethel tried to make a home of their crude, mud-roofed, windowless cabin. At least it was a little better than the tent they had pitched near Ladue’s townsite. Ethel might have been a lot lonelier, but the Lippys were living in a cabin just a mile up the valley. Thomas Lippy had already staked on the upper Eldorado, but the timber was better for building a cabin closer to Bonanza Creek. That’s where Lippy was when a group of prospectors decided to abandon two of their four claims in order to pursue another creek. Lippy quickly registered No. 16. Like Berry and Stander, Lippy was beginning to hire help. Berry, Lippy, Stander and others already had more gold than they had dared dream of! None of them knew the value of the riches that lay in the dirt heaped up next to the shafts.
Meanwhile, bitter and discouraged after years of fruitless labour, and too late to stake on what was already acknowledged as the richest ground on Earth, Swedish prospector Charley Anderson was drowning his sorrows in Fortymile’s saloons. Two disillusioned owners of Eldorado’s No. 29 struck up a conversation. Anderson was more drunk than sober, so the two had little trouble in talking the addled miner into signing away pokes worth $800 in exchange for a claim they were secretly sure was worthless. When he woke up the next morning, Anderson floated across the river to ask Inspector Constantine to get his money back from the two men. Anderson’s name was plainly visible on the title. Constantine shook his head and apologized: There was nothing he could do. In that case, Anderson figured, he might as well see exactly what it was he had bought. He poled upriver and trudged wearily along the busy creek. Within weeks, his claim proved so rich—on its way to an eventual million-dollar payout—that Anderson was dubbed “The Lucky Swede.”
Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks, Yukon
January 1897
Few of the prospectors on the creeks were true thieves. Nevertheless, as winter progressed, tempers flared, voices were raised and fists flew as desperate men became obsessed with protecting wealth they truly thought belonged to them. When the shouting died down, most combatants were eager for an impartial ruling that would determine, once and for all, just who owned what.
Most of the prospectors on the creeks were Americans. Some had been washing gravel in Alaska creeks. Some couldn’t read. When they moved to Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks, many had no idea that they were in Canadian territory. Little wonder they were confused by Canadian mining laws. Even in the winter of 1896 to 1897, Canadian claim sizes and the rules of staking were quite clear. The length of a valid claim on a creek was 152 metres. The area of the claim straddled the creek itself to the hilltops on either side of the creek bed. In other areas, it was nine square metres. Each corner of the claim was to be staked by a one-metre piece of wood bearing the date, claim number and prospector’s name. All this made little difference to men unfamiliar with another country’s mining regulations.
In the chaos of the early days on the creeks, even the most scrupulous prospectors made mistakes. Miners’ methods of measurements were sometimes crude, often calculated with nothing more than a length of rope. Through the chaos strode William Ogilvie and his crew. Peering through his precision survey instruments, Ogilvie found many discrepancies. He surveyed Dawson, the townsite Ladue had named after his former employer. Now Ogilvie had to respond to prospectors’ pleas to sort out the hastily staked claims in hopes of settling a score of disputes.
Ogilvie was no fool. He knew that moving a stake by a mere foot or two might render one man suddenly destitute and his neighbour instantly wealthy. Yet the government official was not one to shirk his duty. Not only unflinchingly courageous in the face of extreme tension, William Ogilvie displayed another important trait. The surveyor was unassailably honest. He kept himself out of reach of any corrupting influence at a time and place where, quite literally, the most powerful influence of all lay scattered about under his boots.
In reconfiguring one claim just above George Carmack’s discovery, Ogilvie found that the owner had taken too much land. The new boundaries created a fraction of pie-shaped, unclaimed land. One prospector on Ogilvie’s crew stared at the ground.
“Have you thought of staking it?” he asked Ogilvie.
“I am a government official and not permitted to hold property,” was Ogilvie’s nonchalant reply. He looked up briefly from his notebook. “You go down if you like and record.” The prospector hesitated. If he staked this little piece of ground, he would be ineligible to stake a more valuable piece later. As the day wore on, no other available ground was uncovered. In desperation, he staked the fraction of land and then tried to sell it. At $900, there were no takers. Finally, the prospector decided to work the claim himself. His first shaft proved barren. At the bottom of his second shaft, he exulted. Within a week, he’d hauled up $46,000 worth of gold. Eventually, this sliver of ground (26 metres at its broadest point) earned him more than $400,000! At this moment in history, an ounce of gold was worth a mere $17. If made today, the prospector’s “fractional” strike would be worth more than $22 million.
Late one afternoon, Ogilvie was working on Clarence Berry’s Eldorado No. 5. Even he was surprised at his findings—No. 5 was close to 13 metres too long. This land no longer belonged to Berry. More bad news: Berry had used up his claim rights, so he had no opportunity to stake it. Even worse, Berry’s dump of pay dirt was heaped on the illegally staked piece of land! A year’s work and thousands of dollars sitting on top of the ground was in jeopardy. Perhaps even more lay below. Clarence Berry stood by anxiously.
“Let’s go to supper,” Ogilvie said, turning to the nervous prospector.
“Is there anything wrong, Mr. Ogilvie?” Berry stammered.
“Come out of hearing,” Ogilvie muttered as he turned and marched off.
“What’s wrong? My God, what’s wrong?” Berry whined, stumbling to keep up.
Striding toward the Berrys’ cabin, Ogilvie revealed his findings.
“What’ll I do?” Berry despaired.
“It is not my place to advise you,” Ogilvie stated calmly. Then, after a pause, he asked, “Haven’t you a friend you can trust?”
“Trust—how?” Clarence asked desperately.
“Why,” Ogilvie explained matter-of-factly, “to stake that fraction tonight and transfer it to yourself and your partner.”
Berry showed Ogilvie inside, asked Ethel to fix him supper, and dashed about seven kilometres up the creek to find his trustworthy companion. Later that night, the two prospectors sat in the cabin and quizzed Ogilvie about the proper way to stake a fraction. Then, hidden by darkness, Berry’s friend hammered in his stakes. In return for the claim transfer, Berry ceded him an equal length off the lower end of the property. The following spring, that fraction yielded $160,000 worth of gold.
CHAPTER
6
A Secret Locked in Ice
In sharp contrast to conditions on the rest of the continent, a handful of men had become enormously wealthy overnight in a remote, snowbound territory few Canadians and even fewer Americans had ever heard of. On small, unknown frozen creeks, fortunes were being found. Elsewhere in Canada and the United States, fortunes were lost.
In the era ironically known as the Gay Nineties, thousands became impoverished as the United States and most parts of Canada were held in the merciless grip of economic depression. Railroads had collapsed. In their wake, banks, mortgage companies and corporations had failed. Men died or were thrown into prison as a result of violent labour strikes. The ranks of the jobless swelled, and many lived close to starvation. People from coast to coast were desperate for relief, or at least were hoping against hope that things might be better someday, somehow, somewhere.
Fortymile, Yukon
January 1897
William Ogilvie was pleased. Captain William Moore’s appearance answered the question of how the isolated surveyor
was going to inform the Canadian government of the area’s enormous changes. Delivering the US mail the 1,120 kilometres from Fort Constantine to Juneau, Moore could put Ogilvie’s letter on the steamer to Vancouver. From there it would be carried by train to Ottawa.
Moore’s energy was astounding. A decade before, Ogilvie had doubted the old man’s stamina. Now, Moore was vigorously mushing his dogs along in sub-zero weather, while most gentlemen in their seventies wanted nothing more than a snifter of brandy by the fire.
For his own part, Moore was not surprised that Ogilvie was still at Fortymile. As Moore had made his way to St. Michael months before, a three-day snowstorm had dashed Ogilvie’s plans to leave the Yukon. As Moore reached Circle City, Alaska, the town had become completely iced in. Since he could travel no farther north, he had made a profitable decision. He’d decided to carry a sackful of mail back up the frozen Yukon River. Swaddled in furs and woollens, Moore was on the trail again, with Ogilvie’s letter to the Canadian government in tow.
A week before, three hardy young mushers had set off on a similar journey. They left Fortymile in an attempt to set a new record to the coast. Within a few days, Moore had caught up to the trio, now starving and exhausted, and offered them a life-saving lift in his dogsled. Moore’s journey did not end at Juneau; he was goaded on by the knowledge that few on the outside knew of the big strikes. He desperately wanted to give the news to his associates in Victoria.
Weeks later, Ogilvie’s letter arrived in Ottawa, where it was duly filed and forgotten.
* * *
In the log town of Circle City, Alaska, which William Moore had left behind, men were becoming increasingly restive. Moore’s story of Klondike strikes had been shrugged off as rumour and exaggeration. Then two traders arrived with samples of so-called Eldorado gold. They revealed letters from men who had purportedly become wealthy overnight.
