"Abundant Fish" and the "Dead Horse Trail"

This in order to ensure no one thinks the pursuit of gold is or ever was an easy thing.

August 16, 1896. Siwash George...a.k.a. George Carmack...is also known as The Squaw Man. He's looked upon with derision. He married an Indian chief's daughter. Lousy injun lover. He's a salmon fisherman...and a moose hunter. He's an outcast. He's considered strange. Heck...he reads Scientific American. He has an organ in his hunting cabin. He composes couplets. This night he has a dream. A huge king salmon is shooting up the rapids...standing on its tail. The fish has gold scales. Its eyes are twenty dollar gold pieces.

He goes fishing the next day--the 17th. He is told of a creek that might...just might...have gold. The name of the creek--translated from the Indian language--is the Abundant Fish. A difficult word for the white man to pronounce. His interpretation...Klondike. Siwash George finds a gold nugget the size of his thumb. And the last of the great American gold rushes begins.

Word spreads. Across the Yukon comes the cry of gold. Settlements empty out. Villages become ghost towns overnight. A town springs up as close to the North Pole as northern Siberia. It's called Dawson City. The call for gold is camouflage for the call of death. A few get rich. The rest--when they're lucky...when they're extremely lucky --only lose an extremity or two. An arm. A leg. An ear. A nose. Frost and greed are the killers. The few that strike it rich lure in the others. Ya hear about so and so? He pulled in $50,000 last year alone. And him...what's his name...he's takin' in $850 a day. All true stories. All one of a kinds. Passage north from Seattle...$1000 per person. That's back in the mid 1800's folks. It's a fortune.

Everybody goes. Lawyers, pimps, bankers, enterprising women, ministers. Two routes exist to the Klondike. The cheapest...a ship to Juneau, or Skagway, or Dyea. From there...a 600 mile trek into the interior. Sled dogs are first choice for travel. Cost...$250 each. In less than a micro-second in relative time...there are no dogs to be had. Second choice...horses. Old...feeble...decrepit equines...normally destined for the glue factories...are imported from the States and sold at premium prices. Of 3000 that set out on the trail, less than a dozen survive. They are left to rot by the thousands where they drop along the trail. They starve...they freeze...they fall and break their bones...they fall in rivers and drown under the weight of their packs. If they fall and are not yet dead...they are left to a lingering death. A bullet used is a bullet wasted. The prospectors' hearts have frozen. In their quest for gold and untold wealth...they became brutish creatures. They are the men of the "Dead Horse Trail."

Out of 100,000 who start out...30,000 hopefuls make it over sheer walls of ice and into the interior. It's a spectacle DeMille could not have envisioned. The lust for gold is unquenchable. Temperatures fall to 40 below. Winds hurl splinters of ice on to exposed skin, lacerating the flesh. Sweat freezes...binding clothing to skin in one step...and ripping the frozen skin off the bone in another. Ah yes... to what end will man go in order to gain wealth? Any end at all, folks. When the weather warmed...multitudes died of hunger and fever brought on by mosquitoes drawn in by the putrid smell of carcasses dead on the trail. Those that didn't die of hunger or disease, were murdered for the belongings. This was the beginning. By 1900, 5000 pounds of gold had been extracted from the ground. The rampage was over. The big shiny nuggets that lured men to their demise were depleted enough to discourage all but the most foolhardy.

Well...there it is folks...in microcosm. The Klondike...despite the hype...was never the immense source of gold most thought it was. However...it did bring about some successes. And they are and were: Augustus Mack...founder of the Mack automobile company. Sid Grauman...who built Hollywood's Grauman Chinese Theater. And the three Mizner brothers--whoever they are or were.

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