Gold Diggers

by Charlotte Gray

  Circle City and Forty Mile at their heydays had nothing on Dawson, as it exploded with the wealth flowing out of the creeks. It was now bigger, brasher, and richer than any other mining town in the Yukon valley. It boasted dozens of log cabins, 600 tents with wooden walls, Father Judge’s half-built hospital, and the foundations of both the Catholic and a Presbyterian church. The business section of the town was growing faster than the residential section, despite the sky-high costs of labor and lumber and the fact that the only building material available was wood: everything else—nails, window glass, stoves, furnishings, building tools—would have to be shipped in from Outside once the ice on the river finally melted. Most buildings were on shaky foundations, since the townsite lay within the permafrost zone. Permafrost changed its texture with the seasons: the soil’s high water content kept it solid when cold, but once thawed it turned into a glutinous muck that was neither water nor soil. A heated building standing on posts on this base would soon shift as uneven melting and the weight of the structure took their toll.

  The Magnet roadhouse on Bonanza Creek was typical of the commercial ventures catering to lonely, thirsty miners.

  No matter. The Alaska Commercial Company had completed its huge new wooden warehouse, but the North American Transportation and Trading Company was busy putting up an even larger two-story warehouse, with concrete foundations, covering about 8,000 square feet. Bill Haskell was of the opinion that “never before was there such a place to make money quickly. Gold dust was flying about in all directions.” He reckoned the construction cost for such a warehouse would be $93,500 (well over $2 million today), for a building that would have cost about $4,500 (about $120,000 today) to erect in California.

  “It is impossible to adequately describe the effect upon Dawson of these revelations of the rich character of the mines when the sluices were cleaned up,” Bill Haskell observed. The heavy bags of gold that continued to be carried down from the creeks were, in the words of one old-timer, “stacked up by the cord” in the Alaska Commercial Company’s warehouse for safekeeping, ready to be transferred to steamers for shipping Outside. But when would that happen? When would the gold start its voyage south and the warehouse shelves be filled with fresh provisions? When? The Klondike was already open: clear water gurgled out of its mouth and onto the Yukon’s frozen surface, melting the top layer of rotten ice and carving deep fissures in the solid ice below. But the Yukon ice was at least three feet thick, and you could still walk across the river. It would take several more warm days, and more pressure from below, before it began to move. Until the ice went out of the Yukon, Dawson was locked in. Until steamers could make their way upriver from the Bering Sea port of St. Michael, carrying a far greater cargo of supplies than men could haul up the mountain passes, the Dawson diet continued to consist of the three Bs—bread, bacon, and beans.

  The longed-for moment arrived on May 17, 1897. On that bright Monday morning, the massive, craggy jam of ice started to move and the cry went out: “Break-up!” Bill ran down to the water’s edge, eager to watch as winter finally loosened its grip. First the powerful current by the far bank swept away the ice in its path. Then the slabs whirling along in the icy torrent widened the channel by smashing aside the ice still clinging to the banks.

  One of the most appealing passages in Bill Haskell’s book is the paragraph dealing with his eagerness to reconnect with the distant world. He had one thing in mind: a square meal. Food, he bluntly admitted, had replaced sex as his most lascivious fantasy. Sure, he was curious to know what had been happening Outside. But after a winter of living on the three Bs, he yearned for the endless supply of milk, meat, and fresh vegetables he had known as a child growing up on a farm. The Yukon’s brutal climate, he sometimes thought, was nothing compared to the horrible scarcity and monotony of the grub, which in his opinion required “a strong stomach and the patience of Job.” At night, he dreamed of cutting into a juicy red steak and “the awakening,” he confessed, “is very painful.” It is easy to imagine this big, healthy man, worn down by bad diet and poor results on the claim, sinking into reveries of chickens larded with yellow fat, mounds of crisp roasted potatoes, soft bread rolls dripping with butter, fresh tomatoes smelling of the sun, apple spice cake. He would give every ounce of gold that he and Joe had panned for an oyster stew, a chocolate cake, or a slice of roast lamb. Now the river was open, it wouldn’t be long before a paddle-wheeler would come puffing upriver bearing supplies of fresh food. Bill watched great chunks of ice spinning slowly in the rush of black water, and he could almost smell grilled beef.

  Within a couple of weeks, a handful of roughly built little vessels appeared around the river bend from the south, swept along by the surging current. In the next few hours, an untidy fleet of more than 200 homemade craft followed them and tied up on the waterfront opposite Joe Ladue’s log cabin. More and more boats followed, and the excitement of their arrival was intensified by the piercing, non-stop shriek from the steam whistle atop Ladue’s sawmill. It had been tied down to welcome the newcomers, and it set the sled dogs howling in a grating chorus.

  But these were not the boats that Bill was waiting for. Their passengers had set out for the Yukon the previous fall, before news of Carmack’s strike had even reached the coast. They had been lured up by the general rumors of Alaskan wealth that had brought Bill and Joe north; they heard about the big strike on the Klondike only after they crossed the mountains. Then they had had to mark time in a village of makeshift cabins and tents at the south end of Bennett Lake, building boats and waiting for the ice to retreat from the Yukon’s feeder lakes. Their arrival immediately doubled the population of Dawson City, but most of these rag-clad cheechakos (as newcomers were known in the Indian terminology adopted by Klondikers) were even hungrier than the Dawson veterans, having exhausted their own supplies during the long winter. Men and women tumbled onto the shore, bone tired and frozen to the marrow, eager to share hellish stories about life on the trail. Bill hardly listened. There wasn’t a tale of treacherous mountain passes, raging torrents, avalanches, frostbite, scurvy, bear attacks, or starvation that an old hand from Alaska hadn’t heard before. What shocked him was how little most of them knew about either mining or the land. Veterans gaped with amazement as the new arrivals unloaded stuff that was of no use in the North, then asked plaintively, “Where do we start digging?” One guy had even bought a bicycle, for heaven’s sake. There were a couple of women clad in men’s city suits. How in heck, wondered Bill, would they handle months of living in a crowded, insanitary town alongside cussing, crude miners? Most of these greenhorns had left for the gold fields on impulse. One man who buttonholed Bill “had never seen a gold pan, much less wielded a pick in the diggings. Many were unfit for the work of mining . . . and a still larger number had no idea what was required.” Bill listened laconically to their chatter, uttering the occasional “Is that right?” His mind was still elsewhere. At least once a day he muttered to anybody in earshot, “I’d give a hundred dollars in nuggets for a slice of beefsteak!”

  A flotilla of homemade craft sailed from Bennett Lake towards Dawson as soon as the river was open.

  Finally, after the downstream rush of homemade craft slowed in early June, Bill heard the sound he’d been listening out for: a whistle echoing up the Yukon valley. Somebody on the waterfront yelled, “Steamboat!” From the opposite direction, the Alaska Commercial Company’s tiny Alice came churning into view past Moosehide Creek and puffed her way against the current to the Dawson shore. A flat-bottomed, bluntprowed stern-wheeler, only her smokestack indicated she was anything more than a small barn built on a scow. But she had made her way upstream the hundreds of miles from the mouth of the Yukon River, and was loaded with newspapers, whiskey, fresh meat, potatoes, onions, and the kind of canned goods (oysters, tomatoes, peaches) that Bill hadn’t tasted in months. Crowds of sourdoughs, their filthy wool pants held up by suspenders, ran to the river’s edge, cheering wildly. Two days later, the North American Tra
nsportation and Trading Company’s Portus B. Weare tooted her way into sight, tied up next to the Alice, and unloaded more goodies from Outside.

  That evening, Bill Haskell gorged himself on the beef, gravy, and fruit pie that he had dreamed of during the long, hard winter. Next, he lit a cigar and opened the first newspaper he had held for eight months. The pleasure of reading almost beat the first taste of steak. He devoured the news he had missed during the long winter: the election of Republican William McKinley as twenty-fifth president of the United States, America’s looming war with Spain over Cuba, plans for the elderly Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the results of the world heavyweight boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Gentleman Jim Corbett. Then he strolled out of the restaurant and sat down on a nearby tree stump, feeling the warmth of the late evening sun on his face and the unfamiliar joy of a full stomach.

  The memory of those six grim months huddled in a tent with Joe, dealing with hunger, cold, disappointment, and boredom, melted away. They had survived. They had found gold. Bill watched yet more unskilled, unprepared newcomers step onto Dawson’s crowded wharf, and shook his head. How many of these gold diggers would find what they were looking for? How many of them could even afford to hang around in Dawson City? By the time he had digested his meal, the price of a good Dawson City building lot had risen from $500 to $800, and it was still rising.

  PART 2 : MINING THE MINERS

  CHAPTER 6

  Father Judge’s Flock, May-June 1897

  NOW THAT THE KLONDIKE’S WEALTH was confirmed, Dawson City’s population ballooned, new construction supplies arrived, and the first big building boom started. Joe Ladue was no longer content to mention San Francisco: his new town, he bragged, was going to be the greatest camp in the history of mining operations. There was a non-stop racket of sawing and hammering, and two sawmills ran day and night to keep up with the lumber orders for yet more stores, hotels, saloons, and dwellings. Large log buildings, many with Wild West-style square wooden fronts hiding peaked roofs, appeared overnight on the muddy streets. But it was still a squalid, gold-crazy settlement of shacks and tents. Some of the tents looked like misshapen piles of soiled laundry, while half the cabins were so gimcrack that they might have been cobbled together by ten-year-old boys. Buckets, a few ramshackle outhouses, and the woods on the edge of town were the only toilets; there were still no public bathhouses, drains, or health facilities. What’s more, as the waters of the Yukon River rose with the spring run-off from its tributaries, and the ground of the mudflats softened in the sun’s warmth, flooding was a constant risk. Lots close to the waterfront were soggy underfoot, while rubber-booted residents waded along most of the streets, tracking mud into every building.

  Empty lots were in short supply, and newcomers found themselves pushed toward the steep slope behind the mudflats as they looked for somewhere to pitch their tents. As they shouldered their way through the confusion of flapping canvas and piles of lumber, many felt as though they had landed in a jamboree or religious revival meeting. Alongside the feverish building activity, however, there were plenty of people just hanging around, staring at the new arrivals. Shabbily dressed, unshaven miners perched on tree stumps and fallen logs, or swarmed around the bars, straddle legged, smoking, chewing, and spitting. A handful of women lounged outside tents, chatting to passersby. They were disheveled and their clothes were worn and dirty: some looked beaten by the hard life of a northern prostitute, but others radiated a chippy confidence and an earthy humor. Dawson was a rough and bawdy place, but it throbbed with life and excitement.

  North of Ladue’s original townsite, Father William Judge took stock of the situation. The Jesuit was a strange character—ascetic, deeply religious, guileless, but not naive. Those who met him recognized the quality of the man. One contemporary described him as having “eyes widely spaced and most unusually illuminated, a forehead high, chin firm, mouth straight but full—if ever character was written on a countenance, the writing here was clear.” After Judge’s death, his brother, Charles (another Roman Catholic priest), would collect up many of his letters and write a book about him. The book’s frontispiece is a grainy black-and-white photograph of the priest, clean shaven and neat, thin and solemn, with wire-rimmed glasses and a black cassock buttoned tightly at the throat. His shoulders slump, he wears a rosary threaded through his sash, and he is too uncomfortable before the camera to allow a glimpse of the humor and compassion that impressed contemporaries. The picture was probably taken in 1886, the year he was ordained. Did it stand year after year on his mother’s dresser in Baltimore, as the earnest young man traveled farther from home comforts toward hardship and self-sacrifice, his hair thinner and his skin more lined with each successive move?

  The priest was unique in Dawson because he was not obsessed by finding, accumulating, and spending gold. But he was not so unusual in the larger world. In the nineteenth century, a huge army of missionaries spread round the globe and scattered through industrial slums, Indonesian jungles, African villages, Pacific islands, and South American mountains. Some 360 Christian organizations, from celibate Roman Catholic orders like the Jesuits to mass membership Protestant bodies such as the Society for the Propagation of the Christian Gospel, maintained an estimated 12,000 Christian missionaries in the field during these years. The Jesuits were among the most well-established missionary forces: Francis Xavier, one of the order’s founders, arrived in Goa, in western India, as early as 1542. Since Xavier’s successes in India and China, Jesuits had been converting souls on every continent. Three and a half centuries later, there was barely a corner of the globe in which the black-robed figure of the Jesuit missionary, with his biretta and large wooden cross, was not a familiar sight. So it was hardly surprising that such a figure had arrived in the new boomtown.

  Father William Judge was as single-minded as most of his flock, but his quest was for souls rather than gold.

  There was another aspect of Father Judge that made him unusual in Dawson, alongside his lack of interest in gold. In his late forties, he was twice the age of most of the men there. As Bill Haskell had discovered during his bitter winter on Bonanza, prospecting in the frozen North was not for the fainthearted or frail. The Klondike Gold Rush was a young man’s game, particularly in an era when most white American men died before their fiftieth birthdays. Yet the unworldly priest had tramped off in late March into the hills, when the sixteen-mile trail was still covered in snow. He was dazzled by the wealth of some claims on Bonanza and Eldorado. “I myself saw one hundred and twenty-three dollars’ worth of gold in one shovelful of dirt,” he wrote to a fellow Jesuit. But he also realized that “there are far more men here than there are good claims for. Those who are working for wages have been making fifteen dollars a day all winter, which is not bad for hard times; but if, as we suppose, a great many men come in when the river opens, wages will very likely fall to ten dollars and maybe to six, as they were before the deposits on these creeks were found.” Judge knew that a crowd of unemployed, disappointed men spelled as much trouble as the town’s lack of sanitary facilities. Disease and desperation would sweep Dawson, and he felt a paternal impulse to protect ignorant sinners from the folly of their ways. But the priest also recognized that the dark cloud of overcrowding had a silver lining for him. Now the river was open and men would start pouring north, it would be easier for him to find laborers to work on his church and his hospital.

  So far, progress was slow. From his letters, it is obvious that the priest loved designing buildings and thinking about how to make them work. He got as excited about placing windows as he did about saving souls, and he spent hours carving the decorations onto his church’s improvised altar. His enthusiasm was just as well because in Dawson he was his own architect, contractor, and head carpenter. In a town of cramped tents and one-story shacks, he had drawn up extraordinarily ambitious plans. Both buildings would be fifty feet by twenty-four, with four windows down each long wall. The hospital would have two floors, and the
church would have a hexagonal belfry tipped with a wooden cross and containing a small bell. It had been a monumental challenge to raise money, find nine men (he had hoped for twenty) to start construction, and organize the purchase of 5,000 feet of milled lumber for the planned buildings. The logs had had to be rafted down the river or drawn by dog teams to Dawson. Given that no supplies were yet available from outside the region, the priest was constantly improvising. Instead of plaster for the inside walls, he used muslin coated in white lead paint. He tacked more white muslin into wooden frames for windows, since there was no glass available. He used empty boxes for washstands and hammered rough-hewn planks together to make beds. Mattresses were stuffed with dried grasses and sawdust instead of hair or cotton. All the supplies cost outrageous amounts of money, for which the priest was constantly scrabbling. Although the prospectors treated him with respect, with a few exceptions they were a godless lot who regarded him as an oddball. They might toss a little gold dust his way if they were feeling flush, but they had no interest in doing the heavy lifting.