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Klondike gold mine. Klondike gold rush

On June 26, 1925, exactly 90 years ago, the premiere of Chaplin's famous film "The Gold Rush" took place. The picture, taken 29 years after the outbreak of the gold rush in Alaska, largely recreates that historical phenomenon. To add credibility, Chaplin even hired 2,500 tramps who waved picks, imitating the work of prospectors. However, in 95 minutes of screen time it is impossible to reflect all the details of the life of gold miners. Yes, this was not required, because in comedy there is no place for tragedies and the collapse of illusions that lay in wait for prospectors at every turn. And the on-screen Charlie, who became fabulously rich and met happiness in the mines, was a rare exception in the Klondike.

In 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush began - perhaps the most famous in history. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not at all necessary to mine it. On September 5, 1896, the steamship Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were hundreds of miners from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a case from a hard drive, completely stuffed with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and massive gold rush in history...

Let's find out the details...

Went for salmon, came back with gold

The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold had been found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. First a precious metal missionaries and fur traders noticed in the local rivers as early as the 40s of the 19th century, but kept silent. The first - because of the fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of the Indians who have just converted to a new faith. The second - because they considered the fur trade a more profitable business than gold mining.

But still, in the early 50s, the first prospectors appeared on the Fraser River in British Columbia. There were few of them: the mines here were not very rich, and besides, the gold rush in California was in full swing. But as California's reserves dwindled, the migration of miners intensified. With varying success, they explored the channels of Canadian rivers, gradually moving north, to the border with Alaska.

Even the first cities of prospectors appeared. First, Forty Mile is a settlement on the bend of the river of the same name and the Yukon. When gold was found just to the north, many miners moved to the new village of Circle City. They mined a little gold here, but still managed to equip their life. Two theaters, a music salon and 28 saloons were opened here for a thousand and a little inhabitants - that is, a saloon for about every 40 people!

George Carmack

Any natural disaster - and the gold rush for the vast majority of its participants was just a disaster - begins by chance, with some trifle. In early August 1896, three residents of the Canadian state of Yukon, bordering Alaska to the north, set off in search of lost Kate and George Carmacks. A couple of days later, they were found at the mouth of the Klondike River, where they harvested salmon for the winter.

Then these five people wandered around for a while and came across the richest placers of gold, which simply sparkled in the stream, and it could be collected with bare hands.

On September 5, George Carmack brought a couple of kilograms of gold dust to the village of Circle City to exchange it for currency and necessary goods. Circle City, in which about a thousand people lived, was instantly deserted - everyone rushed to the mouth of the Klondike. Exactly the same insanity seized the inhabitants of the entire district. Thus, about three thousand people gathered in the autumn of 1896 to extract gold in the places of its richest deposits. It was they who managed to grab the bird of happiness by the tail. Gold lay literally underfoot, and it was possible to collect it without encountering fierce resistance from competitors. In 1896 there was enough gold for everyone in the Klondike.

These lucky ones were obliged to such a lafa by the remoteness of the region from civilization and the absence of transport and information communication with large cities located much to the south. It was these three thousand people, with rare exceptions, who panned gold for many thousands of dollars. However, not all of them wisely disposed of what they had acquired, for most of the golden sand leaked between their fingers.

To decently earned one should also include at most a thousand and a half of those who subsequently arrived in the Yukon from other regions of the world, including even Australia. This already had to literally fight for gold. And endure incredible hardships, because they were not adapted to hard work in the harsh conditions of the north.

You have to admit, they were lucky. Winter began, there was no connection with the “mainland”, no one could either come to the Yukon or leave here, and the broad circles of the American public learned about new gold deposits only in the summer of next year. A thousand miners got the opportunity to pan for gold in the most fertile areas for six months, without worrying about competitors.

The real gold rush began only after these prospectors brought their gold to the “mainland” with the beginning of summer. On July 14, 1897, the steamship Excelsior entered the port of San Francisco. He was flying from Alaska. Each passenger had gold sand in their hands in the amount of $5,000 to $130,000. To understand what this means in modern prices, feel free to multiply by 20. It turns out that the poorest passenger on the flight had $100,000 in his pocket.

And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, the Portland, entered the port of Seattle. There were three tons of gold on board the Portland: sand and nuggets in dirty canvas bags, on which their rightful owners sat, beaming with a weather-beaten smile between frostbitten cheeks. After that, the United States of America (and then the rest of the world, civilized and not so) went crazy in unison. People abandoned their jobs and families, pawned their last possessions, and rushed north. Police officers left their posts, carriage drivers left trams, pastors - parishes.

The mayor of Seattle, who was on a business trip to San Francisco, telegraphed his resignation and, without returning to Seattle, rushed to the Klondike. The venerable thirty-year-old housewife Mildred Blenkins, the mother of three children, went out shopping and did not return home: having taken the savings she shared with her husband from the bank, she got to Dawson and flaunted there in cloth pants, reselling food and building materials. By the way, old Millie did not lose: three years later she returned to her family, bringing with her as a redeeming gift of golden sand for 190 thousand dollars.

"It's time to go to the Klondike country, where there is as much gold as sawdust," The Seattle Daily Times, the city's newspaper, wrote the next day.

And there was a chain reaction. Dozens of ships went north. By September, 10,000 people had left Seattle for Alaska. Winter brought the fever to a halt, but the following spring, more than 100,000 fortune hunters took the same route.

Of course, few people understood what he was going for. The easiest route to the Klondike looked like this: several thousand kilometers across the ocean to Alaska, then crossing the Chilkoot pass, a kilometer high, a queue of several thousand people. Moreover, it was possible to overcome it only on foot - pack animals could not climb the steep slope. The horses and dogs on the slope were powerless. True, there were Indians who could be hired to carry at the rate of a dollar per pound of luggage. But that kind of money was found only in eccentric millionaires, who, however, came across in the Yukon more often than in restaurants in Nice. An additional difficulty: in order to avoid starvation, the Canadian authorities were not allowed to cross the pass if the prospector did not have at least 800 kg of food with him. Some swung up and down forty times to carry the load. They crawled so tightly that, having fallen out of the queue, one could wait five or six hours to get back into line. Frequent avalanches buried both people and belongings under them.

Prospectors overcome the Chilkoot pass

Those who crossed the Chilkoot cut wood, built rafts, boats - in short, everything that kept them and supplies afloat, and prepared for the last push along the Yukon River. In May 1898, as soon as the river was free of ice, a flotilla of seven thousand so-called ships set off on an 800-kilometer voyage downstream.

The rapids and narrow canyons shattered the dreams and lives of many: of the 100,000 adventurers who disembarked in Skagway, only 30,000 reached Dawson, at that time a nondescript Indian village. Of these, a few hundred at best made a fortune on the mined gold.

Acquired by hard work

The statistics of the two-year gold rush that swept the Yukon and spread to Alaska are very sad. During this period, about 200 thousand people tried to find their financial happiness in the northern regions. Happiness was found, as it was said, by 4 thousand people. But those who found death here were much more - according to various estimates, from 15 to 25 thousand people.

Troubles began immediately, as soon as the fortune-catchers got on the ship to Alaska, where it was necessary to overcome the steep Chilkut pass, which the pack animals were not able to master. Here they were met by the Canadian police, who let only those who had at least 800 kilograms of food go through. Also, the police restricted the import of firearms into the country, so that large-scale battles did not take place in the mines, which threatened to spread to the territories of Canada located to the south.

This was followed by a crossing over Lake Lindeman, a 70-kilometer off-road crossing and an 800-kilometer rafting along the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Not everyone made it to the mines.

A harsh climate with strong (up to 40 degrees) frosts in winter and sweltering heat in summer awaited people on the site. People died from hunger, and from diseases, and from accidents during work, and from skirmishes with competitors. The situation was aggravated by the fact that a significant number of “white-collar workers” came to mine gold - clerks, teachers, doctors, who were unaccustomed to hard physical labor or everyday hardships. This was due to the fact that America at that time was going through far from the best economic times.

And the work was really hard. After quickly collecting gold from the surface of the earth, it was necessary to shovel the soil. And he was frozen for most of the year. And it had to be warmed up with fires. During the California gold rush, it was much easier for prospectors.

Decided to try his luck and aspiring writer Jack London, who was forced to leave the University of California due to the inability to pay for his studies. In 1897, at the age of 21, he reached the mines and staked out a site with his comrades. But there was no gold on it. And the future famous writer was forced to sit on an empty plot with no hope of enrichment, waiting for spring, when it would be possible to get out of the lands cursed by providence. In winter, he fell ill with scurvy, frostbite, lost all the cash he had ... And we, the readers, were very lucky that he survived, returned to his homeland and wrote great novels and brilliant cycles of stories.

It must be said that there was not so much gold washed over 2 years of feverish mining for each prospector. In the modern scale of prices, this is 4.4 billion dollars, which should be divided by 200 thousand people. It turns out only 22 thousand dollars.

But one of the most intelligent and visionary entrepreneurs was John Ladyu. 6 years before the start of the gold rush, he founded a trading post in northern Canada, supplying local residents with everything they needed, as well as prospectors who at that time mined gold in very modest amounts.

When in September 1896 all the surrounding residents rushed to the mouth of the Klondike to the placers discovered by Carmack, Ladyu did not stand aside. But he bought not a gold-bearing plot, but 70 hectares of land that no one needed. Then he brought food supplies to them, built a house, a warehouse and a sawmill, founding the village of Dawson. When tens of thousands of fortune-catchers rushed to the mouth of the Klondike the next spring, all residential buildings and infrastructure buildings were built on Ladu's land, which brought him huge profits. And very soon Ladyu became a multimillionaire, and the village grew to the size of a city with a population of 40,000.

Skagway now: a former brothel, now a popular pub

In terms of prudence, only one more person can be compared with John LaDue. Retired Captain William Moore bought land in Skagway Bay ten years before the start of the gold rush. A former sailor, he noticed that this was the only place for a hundred miles where the fairway allowed large ships to approach the shore. For ten years, he and his son slowly built a wharf, warehouses and a sawmill in Skagway. Moore's calculation was simple: prospectors explore all the rivers to the south, which means that someday they will get to these places.

The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and William Moore's farm turned into a large city at that time.

It was worse for the gold diggers, who were just starting their way to the Klondike. in Alaska. From the spring of 1898, about a thousand prospectors passed through Skagway each month on their way to Dawson. Overcrowded towns in southern Alaska have become a haven for thousands of men languishing in anticipation of leaving north. To entertain this restless public, numerous "saloons" and simply dens arose in Skagway.

"Slippery" Smith (center) in his saloon. 1898

The king of this shady world of Alaska was a man nicknamed "Slippery" (Soapy). His real name was Jefferson Randolph Smith II. By 1884 "Slippery" claimed the role of king underworld in Denver, organizing fictitious lotteries. For excessive claims, competing gangs tried to kill Smith in 1889, but he managed to fight back. It got to the point that Denver City Hall had to repel attacks by gangsters with guns. Smith realized that his gang could not resist the artillery, and chose to move to Alaska in 1896.

"Slippery" was ahead of the main wave of gold diggers by a year and managed to prepare well for it. He acted in the usual way. In Skagway, he first organized a gambling establishment in the "saloon". Smith then set up telegram reception by arranging a poker game nearby, which ended in an almost predictable loss for the sender of the telegram. It never occurred to the gullible gold diggers that the nearest telegraph pole was hundreds of miles away. Not everyone understood that they were cheated. And those who understood were in too much of a hurry to get to the cherished Klondike to waste time complaining.

A year later, Smith had strong competitors. In May 1898, under the direction of Canadian engineers, construction began on the White Pass & Yukon narrow gauge railway, which was supposed to connect Skagway with the village of Whitehorse. "Slippery" realized that the gold diggers, moving without delay from the ship's gangway to the train car, would not become his clients, but it was not easy to fight the railway company. The gold diggers themselves have also become bolder. On the evening of July 8, 1898, a meeting of "vigilants" (citizens engaged in lynching) was convened in Skagway. Drunk Smith went to this meeting, but he was not allowed to go there. A verbal skirmish began, which gradually turned into a shootout, during which "Slippery" was killed. The criminal kingdom in Skagway has come to an end.

But still, the biggest fortunes on the Klondike fever were made by those who understood the mechanisms of trade. At the height of the gold boom, commodity prices in Dawson and other mining towns were not only high, they were fabulously high.

Start with what it took to get to Dawson. Indian porters at the height of the fever charged $15,000 at today's prices to carry a ton of cargo across Chinkuk Pass.

For clarity, we will continue to operate with today's prices. A boat capable of rafting 800 miles across the Yukon could not be bought for less than $10,000. The future writer Jack London, who ended up in the Yukon in the summer of 1897, made money by helping guide boats of inexperienced prospectors through river hummocks. For a boat, he took in a divine way - about $ 600. And over the summer he earned $ 75 thousand. For comparison: before leaving for the Klondike, London worked at a jute factory and received $ 2.5 per hour of work. This is $170 per week and 2300 for three months. That is, thirty times less than on the Yukon hummocks.

Like soldiers in a war, the people of Dawson lived in the present. Cancan hostess Gertie Diamond Tooth (the entertainment business was doing so well she got one for herself) accurately described the situation: “These unfortunate people are just itching to blow their money as quickly as they are afraid to give their soul to God before they dig up everything that is there. still left." Pain, despair and icy corpses in the frost-bitten huts coexisted perfectly with the chansonettes, who stood ankle-deep in nuggets on the Monte Carlo stage. The feral miners spent fortunes for the right to dance with the sisters Jacqueline and Rosalind, known as Vaseline and Glycerine.

Of course, the prices can be explained by the difficulties of delivery to godforsaken areas. But greed and monopoly played their part, of course. So, the supply of products to Dawson was almost completely controlled by one person - Canadian Alex McDonald, nicknamed Big Alex. A year after the start of the gold rush, Big Alex's fortune was estimated at $ 5 million, and he himself received the title of "King of the Klondike". He not only bought up dozens of "applications", but also hired bankrupt prospectors to work at his mines. As a result, MacDonald earned $ 5 million and received the unofficial title of "King of the Klondike". True, the ending of the buyer of real estate turned out to be sad. Having concentrated huge plots of land in his hands, MacDonald did not want to part with them in time. As a result, the price of mountains and forests with depleted deposits fell, and the "King of the Klondike" went bankrupt.

Belinda Mulroney

Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started out as a clothing speculator—brought $5,000 worth of clothes to shabby miners, which were sold for $30,000—and then switched to whiskey and shoes, selling rubber boots$100 for a pair. And she also became a millionaire. Having learned about the discovery of gold in the Nome region, the "queen" of the Klondike immediately moved to Alaska. She was still resourceful and enterprising. The "queen" Belinda did not receive the throne, but she managed to marry a French swindler who declared himself a count. Mulroney's money was invested in the European Shipping Company. The "Queen of the Klondike" lived in London, without denying herself anything, until 1914, when the war led to the collapse of shipping and the ruin of many companies. Belinda Mulroney died in poverty.

Moreover, these people were not pioneers. Entrepreneurial people have long known how to make money on the gold rush. A few decades earlier, when California was in a fever, the first millionaire was not some guy with a pick and a shovel, but the one who sold these shovels to the guys. His name was Samuel Brennan, and he was in the right place at the right time.

Samuel Brennan

Bigamist, adventurer, alcoholic, and head of the San Francisco Mormon community, Samuel Brennan, among other things, was "famous" for the phrase: "I will give you the Lord's money when you send me a receipt signed by him."

And it was like that. At the height of the gold rush in California, many Mormons came there. Religion obliged them to give God a tenth of what they earned. The Mormon miners brought the tithe of the washed gold to Samuel. And he was obliged to transport him to Utah, to the headquarters of the church. But no parcels of golden sand from California came. When it was hinted to Brennan from Utah that it was not good to embezzle God's money, he answered with the same phrase about the receipt.

By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day, the discoverer of Californian gold, James Marshall, came to him - then a modest shepherd and owner of a small store. He had found the gold a couple of months before, but kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid off in Brennan's store with gold sand. And to prove that the gold is real, he confessed where he found it.

The pastor used the situation to his advantage. In the next few days, he bought up all the shovels and other household utensils around the area. And then he published a note in his newspaper that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store is the only one on the road from San Francisco to the mines, which means that the prospectors will pay as much as he asks. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $500, bought by him at $10. For a sieve that cost him $4, he asked for $200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years passed, and he was no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California state senator.

However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, embarrassed to send him a receipt for tithing, found another way to remind him of justice. A few risky financial transactions And scandalous divorce bankrupt California's first millionaire. He met his old age by sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.

Most of the prospectors ended their lives in much the same way. Even having washed up millions on the rivers of the Yukon, they could not cope with their passions. Saloons, brothels, casinos - the service industry knew how to get money out of their pockets. Writer Bret Garth, who became famous for describing the life of miners, tells about a man who, having profitably sold his land, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. Witnesses of the gold rush in Australia in their memoirs shared memories of characters who in local taverns lit pipes from five-pound bills (it's like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid cabbies with handfuls of golden sand.

The queue for licenses for gold mining.

Campground on the shores of Lake Bennett. In this place, gold miners built or bought boats to sail further to the Klondike by water.

Another, already more capital settlement of gold miners.

The shortest but most difficult route to the Klondike was over the Chilkoot Pass, over 1,200 meters high. The most reckless and hurried overcame this pass even in winter, and at first there were many of them.

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Production went all year round. In winter, the frozen ground was hollowed out with pickaxes or warmed up with fires.

An artel of gold miners at work.

A group of prospectors on their way to the Klondike.

Perhaps the only ones who really and fabulously got rich on the "gold rush" were dealers who bought precious metal cheaply from miners. A respectable gentleman, seated on the left, poses with bags of gold he bought in the previous fortnight. The chests may also contain gold. Of course, a guard with a revolver with such a still life is far from superfluous.

On the left is the cover of the April 1898 Klondike News, with an optimistic forecast of $40 million worth of gold this year.
And the right picture from the English magazine "Punch" for the same year, as it were, warns adventurers what most of them actually expect in the Klondike.

The Klondike Gold Rush is an unorganized massive gold mining in the Klondike region of Canada at the end of the 19th century.

The fever began after prospectors George Carmack, Jim Skookum and Charlie Dawson discovered gold on August 17, 1896, on Bonanza Creek, which flows into the Klondike River. The news of this quickly spread around the inhabitants of the Yukon Basin. However, it took another year for the information to reach the big light. Gold was not exported until June 1897, when navigation opened and the ocean liners Excelsior and Portland took cargo from the Klondike. The Excelsior arrived in San Francisco on July 17, 1897, with a cargo worth about half a million dollars, piqued the interest of the public. When the Portland arrived in Seattle three days later, it was greeted by a crowd. Newspapers reported half a ton of gold, but that was an understatement as the ship carried over a ton of the metal.

In 1911, August 17 was declared Discovery Day in the Yukon Territory. Over time, the third Monday in August became a day off. The main festivities take place in the city of Dawson.

So, our story about the gold rush in the Klondike and the city of Dawson.

Gold was discovered on the Fraser River in British Columbia in the early 1850s, at the height of the California gold rush. A few people found gold between Forts Hope and Yale at the same time that it was no longer available in California and thousands of miners set off in search of a "new El Dorado".

James Huston, having found gold and having experience of encounters with Indians in California, hid behind the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the indigenous population was mostly loyal. In the meantime, he was robbed and reached Fort Hope in a very bad condition. In the spring of 1857, he began to search for gold in the streams near the fort. Another prospector was Ferdinand Boulanger, originally from Quebec, who also came to British Columbia from California. Together with a group of Quebecers and Iroquois, he discovered gold on the Fraser River. Boulanger showed the Indians how to determine the metal, and he himself promised to exchange it for chewing tobacco. However, the Indians showed the gold they found to Donald McLean, head of the trading mission at the fort. He advised the Indians not to sell gold to white people, and sent the grains found to his boss James Douglas in Fort Victoria, from where it was then transported to the headquarters of the western branch of the company in San Francisco.

Bacon Cooking, 1862. A painting by an unknown artist depicts the interior of a prospector's hut on the Fraser River.

In the spring of 1858, prospectors began arriving on the banks of the Fraser River. In total, about 30,000 gold miners arrived, mostly from the United States. A gradual survey of the entire streams and tributaries of the Fraser River began. In 1860, in a hard-to-reach isolated place in the Caribou mountains, gold was found at a depth of 2.5 m and below. On a standard site, processed by a team of three people, up to 3.5 kg of gold was mined per day. It was the richest deposit in British Columbia, producing about half of the province's gold.

James Douglas at Fort Victoria immediately recognized the danger of the prospectors flooding the region. There was a possibility that the territory could fall under the control of the Americans, and Douglas wrote a letter to England asking them to act immediately, which was done. The British government took away the license from the Hudson's Bay Company, which had previously owned the territory for 21 years, and on August 22, 1858, recognized the land as its colony.

George Carmack

Jim Skookum was in the company, his cousin, also known as Charlie Dawson (sometimes Charlie Tagish) and his nephew Patsy Henderson. After meeting George and Kate, who were fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Klondike River, they went to see Robert Hederson, a Nova Scotian who was looking for gold on the Indian River, north of the Klondike River. Henderson told George Carmack where he was reconnaissance and that he did not want any contact with the Indians.

People from all walks of life traveled to the Yukon, even from as far away as England and Australia. The most surprising thing is that they were mostly skilled workers, such as teachers and doctors. There were even one or two city mayors who left their prestigious jobs for the sake of traveling. Most of them were well aware that the chances of finding a significant amount of the yellow metal were slim, people just decided to take a chance. Not more than half of those who reached Dawson were left with the desire to continue the journey without the hope of finding work. As a result, thanks to the large number of qualified gold prospectors who arrived in the region, the Gold Rush contributed to the economic development of the Western Country. maple leaf, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest Territories of the United States and the Maple Leaf Country.

Most of the gold miners arrived in the Alaskan towns of Skagway and Dayu, both located at the head of the Lynn Canal. From these villages, they followed the Chilkoot Trail across the Chilkoot Pass or climbed up to White Pass, and from there they headed for Lindeman Lake or Bennett Lake in the upper Yukon River. Here, 25 to 35 grueling miles (40 to 56 km) from the place of arrival, people built rafts and boats to cover the last 500 miles (more than 800 km) down the Yukon to the city of Dawson, located near the gold mines.

The gold miners had to carry with them a year's worth of supplies weighing about a ton, more than half of which were food supplies, in order to get permission to enter the Maple Leaf Country. At the tops of the passes, people were met by the Canadian post of the Northwest Mounted Police (abbreviated NWMP, then the name of the modern Royal Canadian Mounted Police), which monitored the implementation of this requirement, and also performed customs functions. The main objectives of the mounted police posts were to prevent food shortages, which had been in Dawson in previous years, and to limit the penetration of weapons, especially small arms, into the territory of the British colony.

Another goal was to contain the penetration of criminal elements into the territory of the Maple Leaf Country from Skagway from the United States and other ports on the Yukon River (at that time Yukon was a colony of England), as well as the British and Canadian authorities did not want to allow a possible armed seizure of gold mines by the US authorities.

By the time most of the prospectors arrived in Dawson, bids for most of the major deposits had already been made. However, any disorder was prevented by the Northwest Mounted Police under the command of Sam Steele.

The gold rush contributed to the development of the territory's infrastructure. For a long time, the main transport arteries of the region were the Yukon River and its tributaries. About 10 steamboats operated on the river, mostly built at the mouth of the Yukon River at St. Michael. After the Klondike gold was discovered, the number of steamboats, their quality and size, increased dramatically. Many steamboats went to Dawson from St. Michael, but some also from Lake Bennet.

In 1900, the White Pass & Yukon Route railroad founded the town of Closeleith (later to become Whitehorse) and connected it to Skagway in Alaska. Two years later, a winter track was laid between Whitehorse and Dawson.

In Game Klondike the location of the gold veins is completely random. They can dig anywhere on your neighbor's map, there is no pattern, just look here and there and your efforts will be rewarded a hundredfold. Dig under every bush, building, rock, and decoration.

To find a gold mine in the Klondike game, you need to dig everything. A goldmine can be found anywhere. Moreover, even the regularity of the location of the veins is absent and is not preserved. Therefore, I wish you luck finding it more often!

Klondike game goldmine. Finding it is not easy and you can do it at random, as they say. It can be under any item or building your friend has. So you need to dig and maybe you are lucky and you will find a gold mine. Each player has about twenty gold veins on the map, so there is a chance to find it. There are veins in which the treasure is good and there is a lot of it, and there are veins with a small amount of treasure. In one gold vein, there can be from two to eight shovels, that is, diggers. Having dug it out, you can find experience, gold bars, collection items. The goldmine is involved in the tasks of wisdom and law.

It's not easy to find a gold mine in the Klondike, because it can be where you would not even think to look for it. Therefore, you will have to search everywhere and everywhere. But there are secrets of how to find it, they say that you need to dig under each new building. But you can still find gold veins from friends!

Are you talking about a goldmine? But I’ll say this: I don’t know, since it can be anywhere, so dig everything in a row and luck will turn up for you and you will find a gold mine.

On any map of any player, the veins are located randomly, in the most different places, but it's best to dig under buildings.

Gold mine online Klondike game can be anywhere, even under a bush or grass. In general, I found strawberries under a bed, and also under a large boulder.

Gold veins can only be found with friends (away). You can only find caches on your lot.

But there is one BUT. If suddenly you find a gold mine with a friend, then you can dig up the treasure only if your friend is on your site. To do this, he will need to be hired in a tent (for gold).

The easiest way to find a Goldmine in the Klondike is if a dog is bought. To search for a gold vein, you need to feed her 9 bones. Before that, you need to hire a friend, from whom you will look for a gold mine on the site.

Find a gold mine in the game Klondike not easy. Since it is set randomly and appears in a chaotic manner at your friend's location.

About the goldmine:

it can contain from 2 to 8 shovels (actions, digging);
the vein can be under any item on the friend's map;
the number and location of gold veins changes once a week;
a gold mine is easy to find with the help of a dog (dog), after feeding it with bones!

In the gold vein you can find:

You can find a gold mine in the Klondike game. And even very easy. Your gold mine can be anywhere: under any item on your neighbor's map; this is a bush, a brick, a fence, buildings, a pillar. Every week, several Klondike gold veins are placed on the map. And always under new subjects. Dig, maybe you'll get lucky.

Finding a gold mine is quite problematic, as its location changes weekly. But thanks to the dog, you can do it. Initially, feed the dog bones and he will thank you.

You can hope for good luck and dig under new buildings and look for a vein from friends. Good luck!

On August 16, 1896, gold was found on the Klondike River in Alaska. From that moment on, the “gold rush” began here, capturing the minds of many thousands of people. Now this area is open to tourists, like some other gold-bearing places.

Open Air Museum of the Era, Alaska

Hope, or Hope, was the name given to their first city by Alaskan prospectors, who built it on the banks of the Klondike. Now it has been preserved in its original form, and is a real museum. From the settlement founded more than a hundred years ago, it differs only in the presence of electricity. Hope is now home to the descendants of those who came here hoping to get rich. They work in logging, hunting or looking for gold in the few remaining mines. Well, and, of course, the residents of the settlement receive the main income from tourism. Tourists are even allowed to try to mine gold themselves, of course, for a fee. And there are always those who want to.

Switzerland

On an industrial scale, gold is not mined, gold mining is at the mercy of amateurs and tourists. It is enough just to pay money for a permit, and you can freely travel around the country and look for grains of gold, participate in gold mining competitions. This brings great profits to the state, because tourists, attracted by the brilliance of gold, usually do not skimp on the purchase of goods and services.

Australia

Here, too, you can mine gold and even allowed to take it out of the country without paying customs duties. You just need to pay a few tens of dollars for a license and purchase the appropriate entourage - metal detectors, maps, equipment. In addition, if it turns out that the site chosen by the tourist has an owner, then you will have to pay him for permission to search for gold. All this adds up to a tidy sum, but what can compare with the sight of shiny grains of sand mined on your own!

California, USA

Not far from the city of Jamestown there is a real “Gold Mining Club”, where a beginner will be taught all the wisdom of gold prospectors. For this, theoretical seminars and workshops are held. Those who want to get rich in three days will be taught how to wash gold, find gold veins by various signs and with the help of a metal detector. US citizens and those with a residence permit in this country can purchase their own gold mining site here, and those who were not able to purchase it are allowed to try their hand at gold mining on the lands of the club.

goldfields,

The Golden Fields deposit, which has been actively functioning for about a hundred years, is now a place of tourism and amateur gold mining. In order to become a prospector, it is enough to buy a ticket, get equipment, and be instructed. For a complete acquaintance with the history of gold mining, excursions to abandoned mines are organized.

Tankavaara, Finland

In this village there is a gold museum, under the patronage of which every year, since 1977, competitions of amateur miners have been held. Well, gold can be mined here all year round, having passed the appropriate training in advance, having received permission and inventory.

In September 1896, the most famous California gold rush in history began. She proved that in order to make money on gold, it is not necessary to mine it - it is enough to know how to lure nuggets out of the pockets of miners.

On September 5, 1896, the steamship Alice of the Alaska Commercial Company sailed to the mouth of the Klondike River. On board were hundreds of miners from nearby villages. They followed in the footsteps of George Carmack. Three weeks earlier, he had brought from these places a case from a hard drive, completely stuffed with golden sand. Thus began the most famous and large-scale gold rush in history.

The "discovery" of the Klondike was not accidental. The prospectors approached him slowly but surely. Gold had been found on the Pacific coast of Canada before 1896. Missionaries and fur traders were the first to notice the precious metal in local rivers back in the 40s of the 19th century, but they kept silent. The first - because of the fear that the influx of prospectors will shake the moral foundations of the Indians who have just converted to a new faith. The second - because they considered the fur trade a more profitable business than gold mining.

A wave of miners .

The measured life of prospectors in British Columbia was broken by George Carmack. He found such placers of gold, which the inhabitants of Circle City could not even dream of. When in November 1896 the news about new deposits reached this city, it was empty in just a few days. Everyone went to the future capital of the gold rush - Dawson.

And three days later, on July 17, another steamer, the Portland, entered the port of Seattle. On board were 68 passengers and their ton of gold. “Now is the time to go to the Klondike country, where there is as much gold as sawdust,” wrote the city newspaper The Seattle Daily Times the next day.

Hundreds of miles to a dream

Further - a crossing over Lake Lindeman and 800 km of rafting along the Yukon River strewn with rapids to the Klondike. Of the more than a hundred thousand who sailed to Alaska, no more than 30 thousand reached the gold mines. Of these, at best, a few hundred made a fortune on the mined gold.

But there were almost more people who actually earned on the prospectors. They didn't wash gold. They realized before others that they could make money not by digging into the permafrost in search of nuggets, but by luring these nuggets out of the pockets of prospectors for scarce services.

The power of premonition .

A native of New York, John LaDue, out of inexperience, also tried the profession of a prospector. Tried to pan for gold in North Dakota. When the idea turned out to be a failure, he became a sales agent. In 1890 he came to British Columbia as an employee of the Commercial Company of Alaska. To avoid competition, he opened a trading post (in other words, a small store with a warehouse) in the very wilderness - at the mouth of the Sixty Mile River. The nearest miners worked 25 miles from his shop, on the Forty Mile River. But Ladyu lured the miners by not selling, but giving away the inventory for free in exchange for a promise to pay for it as soon as the client finds gold.

When the first news came from the Klondike, John was one of those who were closest to the mines found by Carmack. He arrived there with the first prospectors. But unlike them, he staked out not gold-bearing areas, but 70 hectares that no one needed at the mouth of the Klondike River. He brought food supplies there, built a house, warehouses and a sawmill. That is how he became the founder of the village of Dawson. When the gold rush swept through the area, everything built in Dawson was built on LaDue land. A few years later he returned to New York as a millionaire

The forecast came true in full: in two years of the Klondike fever, more than 100 thousand people passed through Skagway, and William Moore's farm turned into a large city at that time.

2000 rubles for scrambled eggs.

Start with what it took to get to Dawson. Indian porters at the height of the fever charged $15,000 at today's prices to carry a ton of cargo across Chinkuk Pass.

The Economics of Jack London.

In general, according to the stories of Jack London, one can easily study the economy of the Klondike. The heroes of his autobiographical stories sell elk meat for $140 per 1 kg, buy beans for $80. When Kid, the hero of Smoke and Kid, manages to get some cheap sugar, he marvels at the seller's compliance: "The weirdo only asked for $3 a pound." And this is no less than $ 150 per 1 kg. $83/kg Smoke and Kid pay for spoiled brisket to feed their dogs. Eggs cost $20 to $65 apiece in Dawson and other mining communities. The price of a kilogram of flour in the most remote villages reaches $450! In the story "Race", the Kid buys for almost $4,000 a used suit from someone else's shoulder that does not even fit him, and justifies himself to Smoke: "I thought it was remarkably cheap."

Dawson also had its own "queen" - Belinda Mulroney. She started out speculating in clothes before moving into whiskey and shoes, selling wellington boots for $2,500 a pair. And she also became a millionaire.

Mormon alcoholic .

Literally intoxicated by the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors embarked on a wild revelry, tried to outdo each other with their unbridledness.

By then, Brennan could afford such impudence. He no longer depended on anyone. And all because one day, the discoverer of California gold, James Marshall, came to him - then a modest shepherd and owner of a small store. He had found the gold a couple of months before, but kept his secret. However, left without money, he somehow paid off in Brennan's store with gold sand. And to prove that the gold is real, he confessed where he found it.

The pastor used the situation to his advantage. In the next few days, he bought up all the shovels and other household utensils around the area. And then he published a note in his newspaper that gold was found on the American River. With this note, the California gold rush began. Brennan's calculation was simple: his store was the only one on the road from San Francisco to the mines, which meant that the miners would pay whatever he asked for. And the calculation worked: very soon he was selling shovels for $500, bought by him at $10. For a sieve that cost him $4, he asked for $200. In three months, Samuel made his first million. A few more years passed, and he was no longer just the richest man in California, but also one of the "pillars of society", the owner of newspapers, banks and steamships, a California state senator.

However, Samuel's end was sad. Apparently, the Lord, embarrassed to send him a receipt for tithing, found another way to remind him of justice. Several risky financial transactions and a scandalous divorce bankrupted California's first millionaire. He met his old age by sleeping in the back rooms of local saloons.

Spending Prospectors

The writer Bret Garth, who became famous for describing the life of miners, tells about a man who, having profitably sold his land, loses half a million dollars in a San Francisco casino in one day. tubes from five-pound bills (it's like a five-thousandth in our reality) and paid cabbies with handfuls of golden sand.

This attack did not bypass Russia either. The gold rush was not as spontaneous as in America, mining was controlled by the state, but still, the income of even hired workers in the gold mines of the Urals and Amur was ten times greater than that of an ordinary peasant. “Intoxicated, literally, by the wealth scattered under their feet, the prospectors went wild, tried to outdo each other with their unbridledness,” we read from Mamin-Sibiryak in Siberian Tales from the Life of Mining People. - During the usual half-hour afternoon tea, pounds of very expensive tea and huge heads of sugar were thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. Expensive imported clothes and shoes were worn for one day, after which everything was thrown away, being replaced by a new one. A simple peasant put 4 thousand rubles each. on the card and, not at all embarrassed, lost this amount, which in reality represented for him a whole wealth, on which he could perfectly furnish his agriculture and live comfortably all his life.

Feverish economy

In the essay The Economy of the Klondike, Jack London sums up the gold rush. In two years, 125 thousand people came to the Klondike. Everyone was carrying at least $600 with them. This is $75 million. Jack London also appreciates the work of prospectors. He sets a "fair price" for a workday of $4 per day. The result is this: in order to earn $22 million (and this is the entire price of gold mined in the Klondike), the prospectors spent 225 million. Most of these millions settled in the pockets of enterprising people who knew and understood how to make money on human passions.

Photo of the Klondike and its inhabitants:

Gold prospectors and miners climb the trail through the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush

Dawson was the center of gold mining in Alaska.

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