During this period, the Phoenix and Tucson newspapers published hundreds of articles about the Harqua Hala rush, some of them quite detailed. The best by far was written by Nellie for Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star. In the piece, which appeared in the March 6, 1889 edition, she discussed the history of the camp, its problems, current progress, and future. She also commented on geological details, mining methods, richness of ore, assays, surface equipment, types of claims, and leading personalities in the field.

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During the next several years, Nellie tried her luck at mining camps in Sonora, Mexico; Globe, Jerome, Prescott, and Yuma, Arizona; and several points in Montana. It was while she was in Yuma in 1897, operating the Hotel Cashman, that Nellie heard of the gold strike in the Klondike. She closed shop, arranged some financial backing, and headed north, making the difficult trek over the Chilkoot Pass to Dawson.

By the time she arrived in the Klondike in 1898, Nellie had worked gold in British Columbia and Arizona, and had owned and worked silver mines in Arizona and New Mexico. In the Klondike, she worked her claims and, for a constant source of funds, operated restaurants.

For much of the time in the Yukon, Nellie had an assistant–her nephew, Tom Cunningham. Together they cooked, served meals, and did the dishes, then prospected and worked claims; when they had the time, they counted their net worth. Nellie made and lost a considerable amount of money in the Yukon. When a major strike paid off, she would invest in further claims and, as she had done everywhere else, she contributed money to the local church and hospital.

By this time, Nellie was a major donor to the Sisters of St. Ann, having given money to their first hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, back in 1875. In Dawson, her social life pretty much consisted of visiting with the Sisters or with the local and visiting priests. Although her business contacts were drunks, gamblers, miners, prostitutes, confidence men, and the hangers-on in one of the world’s liveliest mining communities, she was able to maintain her dignity and self-respect.

Generous though she was, Nellie had a harder edge that often was at odds with the popular depiction of her as an angel of mercy raising a cup of soup to a poor miner’s lips. The reality was that Nellie was a miner, willing and able to push interlopers away from her claims. Feisty, aggressive, and proud, she became entangled in several major law suits while in the Yukon. In pursuing these cases, she did not hesitate to use all the weapons available to her, even deliberately stretching the truth from time to time or acting on rumor or information known to be false. She won some of the disputes and lost the others, but everyone knew that Nellie was no pushover.

By 1904, mining in Dawson had peaked. Nellie began to hear of excitement on the Chena and Tanana rivers–the site of modern Fairbanks, Alaska. Moving there in late 1904, she opened a combination store and mining-supply center. And once again, she raised money for the local hospital.

Nellie did very well in Fairbanks, until she heard her last call. In the distant north, hundreds of miles away, on the Koyukuk River basin of Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, prospectors were bringing in great specimens, and there was wild talk of a huge strike.

She first went to the Koyukuk country in 1905, prospecting along Nolan and Wiseman Creeks. One of the first to file claims there, Nellie would eventually file more than twenty during the next two decades. She seriously worked at least six of the sites and was making plans to bring in larger, more effective equipment when she died early in 1925.

Truly at home in Koyukuk country, Nellie spent most of the last twenty years of her life on Nolan Creek, then the farthest north of any mining camp in the world. She and the from one- to two-hundred others there were really on the edge of the world in a harsh climate, with no amenities, forgotten by just about everybody.

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