12. Getting across the Chilkoot Trail Ice creepers, iron with commercially tanned leather straps. Found on the Chilkoot Trail Ca. 1898 Alaska Gold http://www.library.state.ak.us/goldrush/
17. Reaching bedrock at last, Klondikers would hunt for the elusive streak of gold, then dump the rock in heaps beside the mine entrance where it would instantly freeze - until the three short summer months, the only time warm enough for the miners to sluice the heaps.
18. “Of the one hundred thousand people who set out for the Klondike, thirty to forty thousand got there, and only fifteen to twenty thousand prospected. Possibly 4,000 found some gold.” Source--- http://www.calliope.org/gold/gold4.html
24. Everyday life during the “rush” Some Klondikers took jobs in the mills or worked as watchmen. Others did as their Comstock forebears had done and signed on as pick-and-shovel laborers in the mines. But very quickly the rush ended - the large mining companies moved in with big dredges - and took out the Klondike's holdings - about $300 million.
29. Only about half of those who fought their way over the passes to the Klondike actually looked for gold. Those who did have a claim mined the earth in the most grueling method imaginable. The gold lay in bedrock under ten to fifty feet of permafrost, so they mined Russian fashion - spending the winter months softening the permafrost with fires, digging through it at a maximum of one foot a day.
30. Jack London in Alaska The monumental efforts of the Klondike hopefuls inspired Jack London, Robert Service and lesser talents to spin romantic narratives of the mining life. But history, just as in California, tells a grimmer story. http://www.calliope.org/gold/gold4.html