Ethel Berry

As a young girl, she spent her summers at the lumber mills of Canyon Creek, where her father worked,[3] and most of her winters at her grandfather’s house in nearby Towle.

Their lucky break came when Clarence, tending bar at the local saloon, overheard George Carmack brag about his recent gold strike on Bonanza Creek.

[10] After eighteen months in the Yukon,[11] the Berrys returned to the United States on the Portland – a ship purported by American newspapers to contain one ton of Klondike gold, but which in actuality held at least two.

The following spring, Clarence left to return to their northern claims once again, but wrote to Ethel before his boat departed from Seattle to request that she and her younger sister, Edna, accompany him to the Yukon.

After outfitting the ladies with appropriate travelling attire, the entire group set off for the Klondike via the Inside Passage waterway and the Chilkoot Pass.