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On August 16, 1896, George Washington Carmack and two Indian friends
in the Yukon pried a nugget from the bed of Rabbit Creek, a tributary
of Canada’s Klondike River, and set in motion one of the most frenzied
and fabled gold rushes in history. Over the next two years, at least
100,000 eager would-be prospectors from all over the world set out for
the new gold fields with dreams of a quick fortune dancing in their
heads. Only about 40,000 actually made it to the Klondike, and
precious few of them ever found their fortune.
So much has been written about the Klondike Gold Rush. There is a lot information available, much of it wrong. If you really want to
know about the Klondike Gold Rush read
Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush by
Pierre Burton or
The Klondike Fever: The Life And Death Of The Last Great Gold Rush by Pierre Burton. Klondike was the Canadian edition and The Klondike
Fever was supposed to be the U.S. and the rest of the world edition.
I've read them both, and my opinion is Klondike is the best book. If
you want more, I recommend
Prelude To Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon
by Allen Wright. These books seem hard to find and you may have to pay
a lot of money for a paper back, most likely used. Pierre Burton lived
in Dawson and was the son of a Klondiker.
Now, getting to the point, the reason I'm working on this site is
because I want to make available Robert Service poems. I've
deleted all of the old contents, gold nugget pictures, etc. If you
want to see them and much more, see my recently (10-09) worked over
site,
Gold Classics.
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