Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush

by Lourie, Peter

  Whenever a miner’s boat overturned in the swift stream, all hope for finding gold was instantly dashed. Jack hiked past disappointed men slumped over their battered and broken boats, their heads drooping into their hands, defeated even before they had begun to hike the dreaded Chilkoot.

  Stampeders ford the Dyea River with a cart full of supplies on the Chilkoot Trail, Alaska, 1897.

  (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, La Roche 2010)

  It took Jack and the others three days and three boatloads to haul their gear a mere four miles. Finally, they offloaded the last of it at what was known as Head of Canoe Navigation, and were as ready as ever to pack over the trail. If they got to the summit soon, it might be passable. Even now, Jack heard, it was a veritable wall of mud and cold rain. Increasingly, too, there were bouts of snow up there. True or not true, reports of Stampeders dying up ahead filtered back along the trail, and many men grew fearful.

  One day, Jack heard that a blizzard—it was then late August—had swept over the summit, taking the ragged Stampeders by surprise. But down on the lower part of the trail, Jack was busy with other perils.

  CHEECHAKO

  LUGGING HEAVY LOADS of gear required heaps of food to relieve Jack’s raging hunger. He had never eaten so many beans, so much bacon and sourdough bread. At first his stomach rebelled and couldn’t keep anything down, but a few days up the trail it quieted, and he ate ravenously.

  At the beginning of the Chilkoot, he and his companions hiked over sand and gravel. They maneuvered up and down the uneven trail, around boulders, through stands of cottonwood, spruce, and birch trees. They followed the canyon wall along the icy stream through thickets of alder and willow. Some days, Goodman, who was an expert tracker and hunter, left camp to roam the hills above, looking for mountain sheep and other game.

  Tlingit fishermen sold ten-pound salmon and three-pound trout to the Stampeders for twenty-five cents a fish. Men with horses and mules passed Jack as he panted like a dog on the trail. Jack lifted his aching and sweat-stained eyes to see the packhorses suffering because the men hadn’t cinched their loads on tight enough. The much-too-heavy loads were balanced unevenly on wet blankets, and the beasts suffered sore backs. Jack winced when he heard the horses groan under their huge packs as they went by him on the crowded trail. Sloper bumped into him, but Jack held his tongue.

  Klondikers packing supplies on the Chilkoot Trail near Sheep Camp

  (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, La Roche 10042)

  Some of the cheechakos were able to hire native packers to help get their gear to the summit thirteen miles ahead. During this early part of the gold rush, these porters charged only eight cents a pound to pack goods, but a year later, the cost would soar to fifty cents per pound and even up to a dollar per pound for taking an outfit over the top.

  Jack had no money to hire porters or buy horses. His first loads of food and equipment were sixty pounds. Shepard could barely carry forty pounds. As young Jack grew stronger and got the hang of it, he discovered the key to climbing was to make short spurts and to pace himself. He learned the native people’s tump strap method of carrying heavy loads, using one long strap, wide at the center for shifting the load to his forehead and chest. The ends of the strap held the pack against his shoulder blades, centering on the spine and leaving his hands free to carry a gun or an ax. Crossing dangerous streams this way kept Jack and his partners from drowning. If Jack were to fall into the water, he would still be able to move his arms so as not to get dragged down by the heavy load on his back.

  The Dyea River and all the other mountain streams grew swift and treacherous. The frigid water rushed over slick boulders. Sometimes Jack saw moss-slimy logs lashed together floating downstream, all that remained when men with huge packs lashed to their backs had lost their balance on these logs and toppled into the freezing water. The unlucky ones who could not break free drowned.

  * * *

  A FEW MONTHS after Jack made the trek, in February 1898, the North-West Mounted Police of Canada, known as the Mounties, began requiring Stampeders to carry a year’s supply of food with them because the Mounties were concerned about starvation in the Yukon. It was their job to keep the Stampeders safe. In addition to food, people had to take equipment such as tents, clothing, stoves, and pots and pans. This could work out to be around two thousand pounds per person. But the important thing for the Canadian Mounties wasn’t the weight of the outfits (the professional packers were the ones who were keen to weigh packs in order to charge accordingly), it was the amount of food that each Stampeder took. Checking Stampeders’ supplies allowed the police to keep out anyone who might starve. They could also cut out the riffraff who lived off the proceeds of crime—people who rarely packed more than a deck of cards, dice, and maybe a pistol.

  * * *

  SUPPLIES FOR ONE MAN FOR ONE YEAR

  The list below, taken from The Klondike Stampede by Tappan Adney, shows suggested equipment prospectors should gather before seeking entry into Canada at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass between 1897 and 1899.

  Total weight: 1 ton.

  8 sacks Flour (50 lbs. each).

  150 lbs. Bacon.

  150 lbs. Split Pease.

  100 lbs. Beans.

  25 lbs. Evaporated Apples.

  25 lbs. Evaporated Peaches.

  25 lbs. Apricots.

  25 lbs. Butter.

  100 lbs. Granulated Sugar.

  1½ doz. Condensed Milk.

  15 lbs. Coffee.

  10 lbs. Tea.

  1 lb. Pepper

  10 lbs. Salt.

  8 lbs. Baking Powder.

  40 lbs. Rolled Oats.

  2 doz. Yeast Cakes

  ½ doz. 4-oz. Beef Extract.

  5 bars Castile Soap.

  6 bars Tar Soap.

  1 tin Matches.

  1 gal. Vinegar.

  1 box Candles.

  25 lbs. Evaporated Potatoes.

  25 lbs. Rice.

  25 Canvas Sacks.

  1 Wash-Basin.

  1 Medicine-Chest.

  1 Rubber Sheet.

  1 set Pack-Straps.

  1 Pick.

  1 Handle.

  1 Drift-Pick.

  1 Handle

  1 Shovel.

  1 Gold-Pan.

  1 Axe.

  1 Whip-Saw

  1 Hand-Saw.

  1 Jack-Plane.

  1 Brace.

  4 Bits, assorted, % to 1 in.

  1 8-in. Mill File.

  1 6-in. Mill File.

  1 Broad Hatchet.

  1 2qt. Galvanized Coffee-Pot.

  1 Fry-Pan.

  1 Package Rivets.

  1 Draw-Knife.

  3 Covered Pails, 4, 6, and 8 qt., Granite.

  1 Pie-Plate.

  1 Knife and Fork.

  1 Granite Cup.

  1 each Tea and Table Spoon.

  1 14-in. Granite Spoon.

  1 Tape-Measure.

  1 1 ½-in. Chisel.

  10 lbs. Oakum.

  10 lbs. Pitch.

  5 lbs. 4″ Nails.

  5 lbs. 3″ Nails.

  6 lbs. 2″ Nails.

  200 feet ⅝-in. Rope.

  1 Single Block.

  1 Solder Outfit.

  1 14-qt. Galvanized Pail.

  1 Granite Saucepan.

  3 lbs. Candlewick.

  1 Compass.

  1 Miner’s Candlestick.

  6 Towels.

  1 Axe-Handle.

  1 Axe-Stone.

  1 Emery-Stone.

  1 Sheet-Iron Stove.

  1 Tent.

  * * *

  Just a handful of miles from the beginning of the trail, Jack looked around him. The surrounding woods seemed lifeless except for the loud croaks of ravens in the foreboding gloom. When he listened carefully, he could hear the small chirps of sparrows. He also made out the sound of gunshots on the distant mountain peaks where fellow prospectors like Goodman hunted mountain g
oats for food and sometimes stumbled onto grizzly bears.

  OYSTER PIRATE AND SAILOR

  JACK NOW TRUDGED UPWARD through constant rain. Progress forward in the lower canyon grew torturous. Some days were unbearably wet; some were just hot. Day after day, the group hauled their goods in spurts. The terrain steepened. Jack’s partners passed by each other endlessly and in silence. Jack’s legs ached like never before, yet he had to keep going back down the trail to get more gear and haul it up.

  The journey to the summit of the Chilkoot is sixteen and a half miles from the coast, covering an elevation rise of 3,525 feet. What starts out as a fairly gentle climb through a forested canyon turns into a nightmare climb the last half mile, with five hundred practically vertical feet to the summit.

  Beyond the Chilkoot summit, it would be another ten-mile slog to the shore of Lake Lindeman, where Jack and his partners would need to chop down trees and build a boat big enough to carry themselves and all their gear 550 miles down the Yukon River to Dawson City.

  But Jack couldn’t think that far ahead. He devoted every ounce of aching muscle just to getting the next hundred-pound load a mile up this trail.

  During some of those early days on the trail, Jack was in great pain. After a week, he’d lost weight and his face grew lean. At times he plodded forward, but when he went back “light” to get another load, his feet dragged. Like other Stampeders at day’s end, he could easily have fallen asleep over his food if it weren’t for the excruciating cramps in his legs.

  Stampeders on the Chilkoot Trail approach the summit.

  (Yukon Archives, James Albert Johnson fonds, 86/15, #3)

  Jack took heavier and heavier loads. But even at one hundred pounds a load, to tote eight hundred pounds only two miles required hiking a total of thirty miles, there and back. Sometime after eleven trips, he had only managed to move his and Shepard’s outfits a mere mile.

  On the trail, Jack had a lot of time to run numbers over and over in his head. He figured that in order to cover the entire Chilkoot, it would require a man to walk a total of five hundred miles, and half of that uphill.

  In spite of this gargantuan task, Jack grew confident, cocky, as he got stronger. He even challenged some of the native porters, claiming he could now carry one hundred and fifty pounds of gear at a time. And he did it, too.

  But where did young Jack get all that confidence?

  When he was fifteen, he had borrowed three hundred dollars to buy a small sloop called the Razzle-Dazzle. He loved the freedom of sailing in San Francisco Bay, and he dreamed of adventures crossing oceans, anything to escape the life of the “work beast,” holding down all those menial jobs to earn enough to help his family survive.

  With his new boat, and inspired by some tough Oakland wharf companions, he decided to become an oyster pirate and raid the commercial oyster beds for profit. It was dangerous work done under the cover of night. Armed guards patrolled the oyster beds—getting caught would mean prison time. To dash in and out with the oysters, Jack had to use all his sailing skills. He loved the work and thrilled at the challenge.

  When other boys his age were studying for college, Jack lived a restless, nomadic life. He spent less time reading books and made more money in a week selling stolen oysters than he ever could earn in a year of working in a factory.

  None of the “pirates” was more daring and successful than Jack London. Soon his cronies called him the “Prince of the Oyster Pirates.” Jack’s confidence in himself grew. A regular at a bar on the Oakland waterfront called the First and Last Chance Saloon, Jack hung about with seamen. He was a good fighter, an excellent sailor, and a famous drinker.

  About this time, even Jack started to worry about his drinking habits. Still only in his late teens, he knew his days might be numbered if he kept drinking so much in the saloons. One day, staggering drunk, he plunged into the bay and nearly drowned as the riptide tugged him toward the open sea. After four hours floating in the icy water, he was plucked out by a Greek fisherman.

  Jack decided he must control his drinking. He wanted bigger things for himself. He wanted to explore the world beyond Oakland—he craved romance and adventure.

  Having never tried deep-sea sailing, Jack trained himself to sail small boats in all kinds of weather and began to hang out with deep-sea sailors from the sealing fleet wintering in the bay. He soon signed on as boat-puller for the next cruise of the three-masted schooner Sophia Sutherland, heading to the coast of Japan and the Bering Sea to hunt seals.

  Now, four years after that deep-sea experience, Jack’s wild spirit and hunger for adventure drove him up the fabled Chilkoot Trail. For days, Captain Shepard tried bravely to keep up with the younger men as the climb steepened, but every joint ached from arthritis. Finally, on one of the hottest days so far, the sixty-year-old confessed he couldn’t continue another step. He was in too much pain and knew he’d only hinder Jack and the others. So he decided to turn back. Inside, he felt crushed. All the money and effort it took to get to the Klondike suddenly seemed wasted. He hugged Jack and shook hands with the others, and walked slowly down the trail from where they’d come.

  Sloper, Thompson, and Goodman were deeply relieved when Shepard chose to go back to California. Someone said under his breath, “Finally,” as Jack watched his brother-in-law disappear down the trail, a great relief for him, too.

  They all turned, put the next loads of gear on their backs, and slogged up the endless trail toward Sheep Camp, the site of a large encampment of Stampeders who were organizing and resting before the final push over the summit.

  Resting on the trail

  (Museum of History & Industry, Seattle, shs16668)

  DEAD HORSES

  THE NARROW TRAIL in the hot August rain was choked with horses and mules panting and pulling freight through muck and drizzle as the climb grew even steeper. Stampeders pitched their tents haphazardly along the trail, everyone and everything the color of mud.

  In the silence of concentrated hard work, Jack passed group after group of ragtag miners. Like Jack, none had bathed in weeks. Back then, no one took showers and baths the way we do today. Maybe in a hotel, maybe onboard a steamer, but certainly not on a trail. And everyone got used to the pungent smell of their companions.

  With so many people passing over the same trail, it also became harder and harder to find uncontaminated water. Some people used toilet paper and buried their waste. There were outhouses at some of the bigger camps, but the usual way of going to the bathroom meant finding some bush or tree just off the trail and using leaves or water from a stream or snow to clean themselves.

  Although some Stampeders carried guns on their belts, Jack didn’t feel any sense of danger as he hiked. Everyone on the Chilkoot was driven by one goal alone—to get to Dawson before freeze-up and start mining for the yellow metal.

  The horses paid the biggest price as they approached Sheep Camp. Their legs were cut and bruised from the rocks, and they’d grown as thin as snakes, starving as they climbed higher, where the vegetation faded away.

  At night when Jack camped, he cooked pork and beans, baked bread in a frying pan, washed the dishes, then cut shavings and kindling for a breakfast fire before falling dead asleep in his bedroll, listening to the constant chatter of Thompson. Sometimes during dinner Sloper sharpened his knife, Jack his ax. One of them might mend pack straps, preparing for another day of agonizing work ahead. Big Jim Goodman, after roaming the hills with his gun, knocked out his pipe and pulled off his shoes for bed.

  When Jack had a little energy at the end of the day, he’d strike up a conversation with a fellow countryman or a few foreigners who had come from as far away as Norway and Germany to strike it rich. He was very social, and he loved to share camp stories with strangers.

  Jack would ask a ton of questions to everyone he met. He genuinely liked people, from hobos to sailors. Here, too, he enjoyed listening to the tales told by Stampeders, even when they were tall tales told by veteran miners returning fr
om the Klondike who tried to scare the newcomers.

  One night, a man camping nearby, who was just back from Dawson, talked over the fire about Bonanza Creek, where men were finding gold everywhere. The prospector had nuggets in his pockets the size of walnuts. He said, “You can just reach into the stream and grab these things.” He pulled out a nugget and rolled it around the palm of his dirty hand. The light from Jack’s fire twinkled off the shiny gold material like a dream come true.

  This gold, the old miner said, was everywhere in those streams, and deep in the earth, too. Stories like his fed Jack’s fever for gold and kept him from sleeping that night, even though he was plumb exhausted.

  Next day, Jack and his partners found new energy to lug their outfits over the trail again. Especially garrulous Thompson. But tensions were running high even among friends. The stress of the trek pushed many to their breaking points. Miners began to curse each other. Sloper and Goodman got into it, but Jack kept them from fighting. They squabbled over who should cook and who should carry that day. Thompson said he’d much rather carry a pack and that most of the cooking had fallen to him, which made him very grumpy.

  They heard the story about two men along the trail who got into a terrible fight and decided to go their separate ways. They had divided their gear in a ridiculous fashion. First, they cut their one and only tent into equal halves; then one of them took the stock of their only rifle while the other took the barrel. Each of them was sure he’d outwitted the other. Under the strain of the trail, some cheechakos had already started to go mad.