[2][3][4] The Russians and the Hudson's Bay Company had both explored the Yukon in the first half of the 19th century, but ignored the rumours of gold in favour of fur trading, which offered more immediate profits.

[6] Making deals with the Native Tlingit and Tagish tribes, the early prospectors opened the important routes of Chilkoot and White Pass and reached the Yukon valley between 1870 and 1890.

[26] The outside world was still largely unaware of the news, and although Canadian officials had managed to send a message to their superiors in Ottawa about the finds and influx of prospectors, the government did not give it much attention.

It began on July 14, 1897, in San Francisco and was spurred further three days later in Seattle, when the first of the early prospectors returned from the Klondike, bringing with them large amounts of gold on the ships Excelsior and Portland.

A worldwide publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd, a Seattle newspaperman, helped establish that city as the premier supply centre and the departure point for the gold fields.

[49][50] Among those who documented the rush was the Swedish-born photographer Eric Hegg, who took some of the iconic pictures of Chilkoot Pass, and reporter Tappan Adney, who afterwards wrote a first-hand history of the stampede.

[65] Shortly after the stampede began in 1897, the Canadian authorities had introduced rules requiring anyone entering Yukon Territory to bring with them a year's supply of food; typically this weighed around 1,150 pounds (520 kg).

[82] An alternative toll road suitable for wagons was eventually constructed and this, combined with colder weather that froze the muddy ground, allowed the White Pass to reopen, and prospectors began to make their way into Canada.

[65] Ferrying packages forwards and walking back for more, a prospector would need about thirty round trips, a distance of at least 2,500 miles (4,000 km), before they had moved all of their supplies to the end of the trail.

[53] During the summer, a horse-powered rail-tramway was built by Norman Macaulay, capable of carrying boats and equipment through the canyon at $25 ($680) a time, removing the need for prospectors to navigate the rapids.

[121] In practice, the huge Valdez glacier that stood between the port and the Alaskan interior proved almost insurmountable and only 200 managed to climb it; by 1899, the cold and scurvy was causing many deaths amongst the rest.

[126] This, combined with the numbers of American prospectors, the quantities of gold being mined and the difficulties in exercising government authority in such a remote area, made the control of the borders a sensitive issue.

[127] Early on in the gold rush, the US Army sent a small detachment to Circle City, in case intervention was required in the Klondike, while the Canadian government considered excluding all American prospectors from the Yukon Territory.

Wrangell, port of the Stikine route and boom town from earlier gold rushes, increased in size again, with robberies, gambling and nude female dancing commonplace.

[22][202] The two men bought 178 acres (72 ha) of the mudflats at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers from the government and laid out the street plan for a new town, bringing in timber and other supplies to sell to the migrants.

[203] The Hän village of Tr'ochëk along Deer Creek was considered to be too close to the new town, and the NWMP Superintendent Charles Constantine moved its inhabitants 3 miles (4.8 km) down-river to a small reserve.

[235] Gambling was popular, with the major saloons each running their own rooms; a culture of high stakes evolved, with rich prospectors routinely betting $1,000 ($28,000) at dice or playing for a $5,000 ($140,000) poker pot.

[243][244] The wealthiest dance-hall girls followed suit: Daisy D'Avara had a belt made for herself from $340 ($9,520) in gold dollar coins; another, Gertie Lovejoy, had a diamond inserted between her two front teeth.

[250][n 38] The NWMP are generally regarded by historians to have been an efficient and honest force during the period, although their task was helped by the geography of the Klondike which made it relatively easy to bar entry to undesirables or prevent suspects from leaving the region.

[283][284] The wealthy Martha Black was abandoned by her husband early in the journey to the Klondike but continued on without him, reaching Dawson City where she became a prominent citizen, investing in various mining and business ventures with her brother.

[299] Modern luxuries were introduced, including "zinc bath tubs, pianos, billiard tables, Brussels carpets in hotel dining rooms, menus printed in French and invitational balls" as noted by historian Kathryn Winslow.

George Carmack left his wife Kate—who had found it difficult to adapt to their new lifestyle—remarried and lived in relative prosperity; Skookum Jim had a huge income from his mining royalties but refused to settle and continued to prospect until his death in 1916; Dawson Charlie spent lavishly and died in an alcohol-related accident.

[311] Gene Allen, for example, the editor of the Klondike Nugget, became bankrupt and spent the rest of his career in smaller newspapers; the prominent gambler and saloon owner Sam Bonnifield suffered a nervous breakdown and died in extreme poverty.

[314] Katherine Ryan may not have received deserving recognition in the public eye,[315] but she is remembered as one of the first women to walk the Stikine Trail, as an early suffragette, and as an integral piece of Dawson City's culture.

[333] The railway built for prospectors through White Pass in the last year of the rush reopened in 1988 and is today only used by tourists, closely linked to the Chilkoot trail which is a popular hiking route.

[335] The events of the Klondike gold rush rapidly became embedded in North American culture, being captured in poems, stories, photographs and promotional campaigns long after the end of the stampede.

Service created well-known poems about the gold rush, among them Songs of a Sourdough, one of the bestselling books of poetry in the first decade of the 20th century, along with his novel, The Trail of '98, which was written by hand on wallpaper in one of Dawson's log cabins.

[345] The experiences of the Irish Micí Mac Gabhann resulted the posthumous work Rotha Mór an tSaoil (translated into English as The Hard Road to Klondike in 1962), a vivid description of the period.

[350] These pictures, in turn, inspired Charlie Chaplin to make The Gold Rush, a silent movie, which uses the background of the Klondike to combine physical comedy with its character's desperate battle for survival in the harsh conditions of the stampede.

[353] Indeed, much of the popular literature on the gold rush approaches the stampede simply as a final phase of the expansion of the American West, a perception critiqued by modern historians such as Charlene Porsild.