100,000 people abandoned their lives to trek to a frozen corner of Canada chasing gold — crossing glaciers, burying horses in mud — to find nearly every claim already staked.
In August 1896, prospector Skookum Jim Mason and his companions discovered placer gold in a creek off the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Word didn't reach the outside world until July 1897, when a steamship arrived in Seattle carrying prospectors and nearly a ton of gold. The news sparked a stampede.
To reach the goldfields, most prospectors had to climb either the Chilkoot Pass or White Pass through the Alaskan mountains in winter. Canadian authorities required each person to haul at least a year's worth of supplies — roughly a ton of goods — meaning most climbers made the near-vertical ascent 30 or more times. The trail became known as the 'Dead Horse Trail' after an estimated 3,000 pack animals died on it.
An estimated 100,000 people set out for the Klondike. Only 30,000 to 40,000 actually reached the goldfields — many turned back, died of disease, or were stranded by ice. Of those who arrived, fewer than 4,000 found any gold at all. Only a few hundred became genuinely wealthy.
By the time most arrivals reached Dawson City in 1898, every profitable claim had already been staked by those who came before. Dawson itself grew from nothing to a city of 30,000 in under two years — complete with electricity, theaters, newspapers, and saloons — and then collapsed back to near-nothing almost as quickly.
Jack London was 21 when he joined the stampede. He spent the brutal winter of 1897–98 in the Yukon suffering from scurvy and returned to California with little gold, but with enough raw material for dozens of short stories and novels that would make him one of America's most successful writers.
The rush ended almost as suddenly as it began. When gold was discovered near Nome, Alaska in 1899, most remaining stampeders simply packed up and left. Dawson City went from boomtown to near-ghost town almost overnight, leaving behind thousands of abandoned claims and broken dreams.