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A Gift from the Past

A Journal to Riches

By Doug CaldwellPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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Browsing old books at a yard sale I found a black leather-bound notebook that appeared to be quite aged and worn. On the lined paper was a neat cursive script written in fountainpen. Turning to the inside cover I read: Journal of David Moore, Expedition to the Klondike 1896. That night armed with a couple fingers of single malt I sat and began to read of his adventure.

He began with a request to please advise his parents if he should expire during this expedition, details on how to contact his parents were included. He also wrote a few pages about himself and what led him to make this journey.

He was employed as a typesetter/pressman for the San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Moore was well informed about the recent find of gold in the Klondike as the newspaper was a gathering place for information about the magnificent discovery.

Aged 27 he was still single following a few attempts at courting a spouse that did not come to fruition. Once news of the Klondike gold strike became better known, stampeders assembled in San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. The fever was spreading like a virus and there was but one treatment for it - Gold!

In this book he wrote in exquisite detail his plans which included basic supplies with quantities, estimated weights and prices. He noted the details for travel to Skagway where he would begin the overland portion of his trek. He took care to include where the hazards were and how to avoid them or identify an alternate route around them.

Spending two months acquiring the resources he needed, he was ready. Wishing his parents farewell and promising to do his best to return safely home, he set off into an unknown world of risks and rewards.

He did not write as much once he was underway but took to adding a few captions as time allowed.

“April 17, 1897: Leaving San Francisco on board the SS Leelanaw along with a few hundred others with the same dream. Some of these fellows are much better outfitted than I, and I am much better prepared than others. Some of these men are in partnerships of various kinds, and many like me are striking out on our own.”

He noted the sights seen along the way: whales, fishing boats and the lights of cities and sea-side towns that glowed at night as the freighter chugged northward. Like others, he was sleeping on the deck near his possessions; he considered the rough wet weather as good training for the trials ahead.

His daily entries became even more cryptic once he arrived at Dyea Alaska and all of his supplies were off loaded and protected from the weather of which Alaska’s seemed to be more brutal.

“May 18, 1897 I have hired three large native gents to assist getting my supplies to the Customs inspection at the top of the mountain. 1500 steps carved into the snow and ice with a single rope to grasp as we carry the maximum we are able to the top. These experienced fellows estimate it will take two days for us to relocate my gear.”

His journal described challenges he had not imagined in his original planning and found he had to improvise many solutions. David was focused on making this journey safely and he partnered with two other men to build and guide their large overloaded raft down the Yukon River. There were some things a fellow should not do alone.

A few short entries about the trip to Dawson City were made - mostly observations about the misfortune of others along the way.

“August 4, 1887 Dawson at last! There are more people here than I had imagined… Newly constructed buildings and acres of canvas tents make up this muddy town… The cost of dry goods is extreme as is the price of food in the hotels and saloons… I must leave Dawson soon to become self-sufficient or I will spend my grub steak far too quickly.”

The journal displayed some rather large gaps in his entries after his arrival in Dawson. Much time was spent testing and buying a claim and then preparing to endure the coming winter season which could be bitterly cold. He staked a claim on Juniper Creek that tested well as each pan’s worth of gravel and sand he washed yielded some flakes of color.

He described the effort required to build a log cabin with a sod roof. By the end of October he was set to wait out the winter season when it fully arrived. Already he was grateful for his snug little cabin with the cast iron stove and the substantial pile of firewood he had harvested as temperatures overnight were already well below the freezing mark – how cold he did not know as thermometers were not available. Exposed flesh would freeze solid in a very short amount of time. Amputating frostbitten fingers and toes of the greenhorns was more common than talked about.

He bought caribou meat from a local native hunter which he could augment with rabbits and grouse from near his cabin. A sack of flour, some rice, salt, a jar of honey and some tea were added to his pantry.

His journal entries included information he learned about how to be a successful placer miner. He conversed with many who were quick with suggestions on how to mine his claim. Some of his entries were pages long as he waited for the bitter winter to give way to springtime.

Observations of the Aurora, howling wolves, notes on moose near his cabin and the snow that buried everything were entered into this book. He also recorded what some of the other miners were doing over the winter season when the creeks were frozen and water was available only by melting snow on a stove.

Some miners laboured the previous summer digging shafts down to where the gold is found, and then over the winter they would light fires in the shaft to melt the ground so they could haul the muck up and pan the gold out in their cabin. David’s neighbour mined in this way and it was a clear that this was too much work and very dangerous for one man, so he opted to wait until spring to begin sluice mining.

David designed his own sluice box and spent the latter part of the winter season building it. The book contains drawings of his design with measurements and marginal notes for its operation.

Many of his entries were about the performance of his sluice box. June 14th he washed his first substantial nuggets. He was jubilant and these minor riches encouraged him to work longer days now that he was certain gold was present.

With income from his work on this claim, he staked the two adjacent claims. He found the claim downstream to be a very rich in coarse gold while the other two were middling rich in gold dust with the occasional “Klunk” a term given to the sound of a sizable nugget when dropped into a gold pan. Klunks are larger than “Tinks” and gold dust is often called “Flour”. Each Saturday he would log the week’s results in a table he had created.

Two years he spent working those claims and he was successful in his efforts. He had accumulated a significant amount of gold and began to think of the coming winter and other things. He never received a reply letter to the one he sent to his parents last year. He decided to quit while he was ahead, sell his claims and return home with riches to keep his family comfortable.

He decided to take the sternwheeler back to Whitehorse, then ride the newly completed railway that would put him at the boat dock in Skagway once again.

Transporting an estimated 60 pounds of gold was not a simple task and there were shady characters along the way eager to relieve him of that weight. He booked a stateroom on the sternwheeler for the trip to Whitehorse departing the following Friday morning.

He settled his affairs and sold his three claims at a healthy profit as many of the newly arriving gold seekers had nowhere to seek. With pockets full of cash and a wooden dynamite crate loaded with pokes of gold, he waited for the sternwheeler to arrive.

The SS Caska was filled to capacity as this was shortly before the river would freeze hard for the next six months. Many were keen to return home to the south.

“ October 18, 1890 The Purser advised there will be a delay in reaching Whitehorse due to ice conditions north of Carmacks… We have been two days tied to the shore waiting for the ice to clear. It has become much colder and the ice on the river surface is knitting together… The Captain has suggested passengers who want to catch the train to Skagway should take the overland route to Whitehorse.”

Disappointed, he resigned to taking the 120 mile trip to Whitehorse in an open horse-drawn sleigh with temperatures around 30 below freezing. David was concerned about his box of gold with the lax security on the trail and the overnight stops in the stage lodges offered little protection. The ticketing agent advised him to find somebody in town to care for his gold and offered two names of trustworthy people nearby.

David spent the day before the sleigh’s departure hiding his treasure and recording with diagrams and measurements where he had hidden his fortune to be reclaimed the following year. He worried greatly about his parents otherwise he would have remained until next spring.

Passengers in the sleigh had heavy bison robes for keeping warm as they huddled together. The trip was cold and bitter but uneventful as the four-day punishment concluded next to the new train station in Whitehorse.

The last scribbled entry in this book was brief: “I’m to downtown for a wash-up and a good meal before the train to Skagway. I will buy food for the boat trip there.”

This is where David’s written story ends and a new one begins. I am not sure how the journal was separated from Mr. Moore and ended up in a yard sale a century later.

I did go looking for Mr. Moore’s gold. Following his instructions, I dug three holes to eventually find the dynamite box buried deep under a willow bush. The box was in remarkable condition as it was infused with paraffin and wrapped in an oiled canvas tarp. The leather gold pokes were rotted creating a mass of dull gold nuggets with bits of leather sprinkled about, the finer gold dust had settled to the bottom.

The price of gold during the Klondike Gold Rush was around $16 per ounce. Moore’s 77 pounds of gold was valued around $20,000 in the early 1900s. But this was raw gold with quartz and other minerals in it, so it had to be refined to 99.9% pure before it was worth as much as it could be.

Today that gold is worth $1,709,500. I kept a few of the larger nuggets for jewelry purposes and the rest got melted into ingots.

Records from his former employer - the San Francisco Chronicle - confirm Mr. Moore came to an untimely death when he succumbed to smoke below decks after his freighter ride home caught fire off the Oregon coast.

I spoke with the people who had the yard sale and they could not offer any clue to how the book came into their possession and as they were new to the Yukon, it was not an item that was handed down from ancestors.

I often thank Mr. Moore for his unfinished story and I feel a little sad that he did not get to spend the riches that he worked so hard for…but I get over it.

vintage
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About the Creator

Doug Caldwell

I hope to learn from all of you members on this site and share in some tale-telling. I am looking forward to the different styles used to tell these stories. I look forward to reading yours.

Be Well

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