In the fall of 1897, the more popular was the 550-mile Skagway Trail over White Pass. At first glance, it seemed the less demanding of the two; it climbed more gradually, which meant that–in theory at least–pack animals could negotiate it. Once on the trail, miners found it nowhere near as easy as it looked. It led them through mudholes big enough to swallow an animal, over sharp rocks that tore at horses’ legs and hooves, across cliffs of slippery slate, where the trail was a scant 2 feet wide and a 500-foot drop awaited any animal–or miner–who made a misstep.

Most of the pack animals were broken-down horses that would have been lucky to survive the trek under the best of conditions. Overburdened as they were by miners desperate to get their outfits over the pass as quickly as possible, they didn’t stand a chance. Before long, the trail was christened ‘Dead Horse Trail’ after the many carcasses that littered it. As writer Jack London described it, ‘The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps. ‘ If a horse gave out in the middle of the narrow trail, no one bothered to drag it away; it was simply ground into the earth by the endless parade of feet and hooves. Faced with this nightmare of mud and mayhem, thousands of miners turned back, sold their outfits, and retreated to civilization with spirits broken and pockets empty. But thousands more slogged on and reached Lake Bennett, the headwaters of the Yukon River. Only a very few made it before cold weather choked the lake and the river with ice. The rest were marooned on the shores of the lake until spring.

When heavy snow made the Skagway Trail impassable, the growing flow of gold seekers switched to the Dyea Trail, also called the ‘Poor Man’s Trail’ because it was too steep for pack animals. But even there, the Klondikers were forced to hire Indian packers, at as much as 50 cents a pound, or else lug their outfits themselves, 100 pounds at a time, leaving each load alongside the trail somewhere, then going back for the next load and so on, over and over; by the time a miner transferred his whole outfit to the far side of the pass, he might have walked the 40-mile trail 30 or 40 times, and spent three months doing it. The most daunting part was Chilkoot Pass, which lay at the top of a nearly vertical slope, four miles long. An unbroken stream of Klondikers toiled up it day and night–a total of 22,000 in the winter of 1897. It was an agonizing climb, and the worst of it was that each man had to repeat it again and again until his entire outfit was carried over the pass. The only consolation was that, between loads, he got a free ride down the snowy slope on the seat of his pants.

For the entrepreneur, there was money to be made here, too. Several roadhouses went up along the trail, including the grandly named Palmer House at the foot of the pass. Most were no more than large tents or ramshackle wooden structures, but they offered hot meals and a place to sleep, even if it was only on the floor. On the worst stretches of trail, an enterprising man could bridge a mudhole with logs and charge a fee to each miner who crossed. At the pass itself, several men laboriously chopped 1,500 steps in the hard-packed snow, then collected so much money in tolls that the route was dubbed ‘the Golden Stairs.’

Like the travelers on the Skagway Trail, those who crossed Chilkoot Pass ended up in a vast tent city on the shores of Lake Bennett and spent long months there, waiting for the thaw. Most passed the time cutting trees from the surrounding hillsides and sawing them into planks for boats that, in the spring, would take them down the Yukon River to the gold fields, still 500 miles away.

At the end of May 1898, the ice broke, and a flotilla of flimsy, handmade craft set off downriver, only to encounter one last deadly obstacle–Miles Canyon. The ferocious rapids in the canyon smashed boats to splinters on the rocks, so many of them that the North-West Mounted Police decreed that every boat had to be inspected and then guided through by a competent pilot. A few experienced sailors got substantial grubstakes by taking boats through the canyon at up to $100 a trip. Among them was Jack London, who netted a cool $3,000.

The boats had one more stretch of rapids to endure, and then the Yukon stayed pretty tame all the way to Dawson City. Before the fall of 1896, Dawson didn’t exist. When gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek, a tent camp went up at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. By the following summer, its population had grown to 5,000. A year later, after the Klondike fever spread worldwide, it swelled to 40,000–becoming one of the largest cities in Canada. Thanks to the North-West Mounted Police, it was a far more law-abiding town than Skagway, though there were only 19 Mounties in the Yukon in late 1896. By November 1898, however, there would be 285. In the summer of 1897, the Mounties’ new headquarters became Fort Herchmer, at Dawson. Detachments were established atop White and Chilkoot passes. The Mounties’ main function was collecting customs duty for supplies brought into Canada by the gold seekers. In addition, between 1898 and 1900, a 200-man militia outfit, known as the Yukon Field Force, also operated in the area, helping the North-West Mounted Police to guard gold shipments, banks and prisoners.

Despite the presence of law enforcement officers, the flood of new gold seekers still generally found the Yukon just another stage of Hell. After a miserable, cramped sea voyage, after a weary trek across mosquito-infested bogs and over glaciers, after interminable months spent courting frostbite in a flimsy tent, they had finally reached the fabled gold fields, only to find that all the land along every gold-bearing creek had long since been staked out. For many of them, this was the final blow; they sold their outfits and headed home. Those who stayed felt lucky to find jobs in the bustling town or working someone else’s claim for $17 a day in gold dust–good wages on the outside, but barely a living here.

But if Dawson dashed the dreams of the gold seekers, for those few who’d had the foresight to bring goods to sell, the town was a gold mine. The old timers who had spent the winter there, subsisting on a diet of beans and biscuits at best, were eager to trade their gold for luxuries like eggs, fruit, writing paper, or just a bit of news from the outside. One newcomer sold a months-old copy of a Seattle newspaper, soaked with bacon grease, for $15.

As Dawson grew, so did the fortunes of those who made the right business decisions. While most men devoted their energies to working a single claim, Alex McDonald, a Nova Scotian whose shy, awkward manner belied a canny business sense, bought up the claims of discouraged miners and hired others to work them for him. He earned $5 million and the title ‘King of the Klondike’ without ever lifting a pick or shovel. The ‘Queen of the Klondike,’ Belinda Mulroney, took another route to riches. She arrived in the Klondike in the spring of 1897 with $5,000 worth of cotton clothing and hot-water bottles, which she sold for $30,000. Next, she opened a lunch counter and, with the profits, hired men to build cabins that sold before the roofs were on. A successful roadhouse near the gold fields followed. But that was not ambitious enough for Mulroney. She went on to build the grandest hotel in the Klondike–the Fairview, which boasted brass beds, fine china, cut-glass chandeliers and chamber music in the lobby, even electricity generated by the engine of a yacht anchored in the harbor.

For a brief time, Belinda and Big Alex became partners in a scheme to salvage the cargo of a wrecked steamboat. Crafty Alex got to the wreck first and made off with the most valuable supplies, leaving Belinda only some cases of whiskey and a large inventory of rubber boots. ‘You’ll pay through the nose for this,’ she promised, and, as usual, she got her way. When the spring thaw turned the ground in the gold fields to mush, McDonald was in dire need of boots for his men, and Mulroney was happy to provide them–at $100 a pair. Mulroney went on to become the only women manager of a mining company, the largest in Yukon Territory.

But life in Dawson had become too tame for the Queen of the Klondike. When news came of a bigger gold strike in Nome, Alaska, she headed down the Yukon to conquer this new region. So did most of the population of Dawson. During one week in August 1899, 8,000 people deserted Dawson for the beaches of Nome. Just three years after the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, the great gold rush was over. Of the 40,000 people who reached Dawson, only about 15,000 actually had the grit to work the gold fields; of those, about a quarter actually unearthed any gold, and only a handful of them became wealthy. Of that handful, a very few managed to hang onto their wealth. Most gambled or drank it away.

Big Alex McDonald became obsessed with buying up unwanted claims and eventually found himself stuck with a lot of worthless real estate. He died broke and alone. Belinda Mulroney married a fake French count and lived in style for several years, until her husband invested her money in a European steamship company–on the eve of World War I, which put an end to merchant shipping. She, too, died nearly penniless.

Tagish Charley sold his claim, spent the proceeds lavishly, and died an alcoholic. Shookum Jim wasn’t content with the riches he’d made; he spent the rest of his life searching in vain for another strike equal to the one on Bonanza Creek. Ironically, George Carmack, who had never had much use for money, was one of the few miners who managed to keep and even increase his fortune by investing in businesses and real estate. He was still a wealthy man when he died in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1922.

Although the heyday of the individual prospector ended with the rush to Alaska in 1899, a more subtle and more profitable exploitation of the Klondike began. The new railroad line from Skagway was completed that summer, opening up the area to the big mining companies with their mechanical dredges, which did the work of hundreds of miners. They continued to mine the land the gold seekers had abandoned for another 50 years, and unearthed millions more in gold. Once again, the men of business had triumphed.

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This article was written by Gary L. Blackwood and originally appeared in the August 1997 issue of Wild West.

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