A powerful wave swept across our nation in July, 1897 with news that the EXCELSIOR had reached San Francisco with thousands of dollars in gold from Klondike Creek.
Alighting swiftly, early birds rode the first crest of the wave, staked the richest claims or undertook entrepreneurial ventures which often made them equally rich.
Unfortunately, harsh winter conditions and too much competition around Dawson caught others as the wave broke and fell to its trough. While many returned home, some pressed on looking for newer, unclaimed fields.
Soon, my grandfather, Dan L. Thomas, a young coal miner, and his brother Jack, both living in Iowa, must have felt the tingle and spray of a second breaker which had crashed onto the "golden sands" of faraway Nome. The Seward Peninsula beaches were offering another chance. Dan and Jack quickly rounded up some friends, encouraging them to pool their money into the venture, as they made plans to head for Seattle.
Years later, in 1954, my grandfather wrote from memory a description of those exhilarating days which were part of the extension of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897 and 1898.
The following excerpts from that "autobiographical
sketch" have been edited for clarity and brevity:
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Keb, Iowa--January or February, 1900
About this time, Jack and I decided to see if we could raise the funds to join the gold rush. Between Jack, Dave, George, Evan and myself, we raised about eight-hundred dollars. At this time Jack was in Montana so I made all the arrangements for steamship tickets. I was to get on the train at Ottumwa, Iowa and Jack was to get on at Helena, Montana. Our ship (STEAMSHIP SENATOR) was to leave Seattle May 19th, 1900. Life in Keb the next three or four months, for me, was rather tense as I was anxious for the time to come when we would leave for Alaska.
On May 1, 1900 I left Ottumwa via C. B. and Q. R. R. for Seattle. Jack got on the train at Helena. We arrived in due time in Seattle. The city was all activity. There were thousands buying supplies and getting ready to embark for Alaska. There were scores of hawkers on the streets displaying their wares, camping outfits, tents, stoves, blankets, boots, sluicing apparatus, and everything imaginable necessary for extracting gold from the sand.
On May 19th, very late at night, the S.S. SENATOR left the dock in Seattle and headed out of Puget Sound. We had steerage tickets (seventy-five dollars) and were entitled to a bunk, but the first night I had to sleep on the deck as some stowaway had climbed in a bunk, and it was the next day before they located him. There were about four hundred passengers aboard.
It was sometime next morning before we struck Cape Flattery; the water was rough going out and I got very sea sick. For relief, I went up to the bow of the boat and sat on a coil of rope. I was at the right place to get all the rocking there was. After about an hour a fellow came to me and said. "Young fellow, you are in the worst place you could be. Go back to the middle; you will not feel the rocking so much." I took his advice, but when the sea was a little rough, I was sea sick.
They did not feed us very well on board ship. We would buy pies from the waiters in first and second class--also bought apples.
We had lots of time to kill during the day on the ship. We
spent it walking around the ship or sitting on the main deck and sometimes
playing penny ante at which Jack was pretty lucky. He was so lucky in fact
that a well-meaning passenger warned me against him, saying he was a professional.
That was funny as I doubt if Jack ever stole a card playing poker.
Sometimes we only had salt water to bathe and shave with, which caused many not to shave at all. Jack let his beard grow until he looked like a gorilla.
Our boat passed Dutch Harbor and came into the ice fields of the Bering Sea. But boats could not get through the ice. There were about twenty different kinds of craft anchored to the ice waiting for it to break up so they could go on to Nome.
We did a very foolish thing one day while anchored to the ice. There was one of the old time sailing vessels anchored about a mile from us. Jack and I and three other fellows decided to go and look this picturesque craft over. The ice we had to cross was an ice jam of great pieces of ice frozen together and not level; we had to climb up and down on the ice continually, but we finally got to the sailing vessel and looked it over.
There was an old man on the sailing boat who told us he had taken part in every gold rush west of the Mississippi river since 1849. We started back to our boat. I was somewhat scared about crossing the ice again and began realizing how dangerous it was and how foolish we were. If the ice had pulled apart or if our captain had moved our boat, we would have really been in a fix; however none of these things happened, and we finally got back to the boat. But we still had another problem as when we got off our boat we had slid down a twenty-five foot rope and we had to climb it back up. I did not fear that for myself, but Jack had rheumatism which had left his limbs pretty weak. When it was Jack's turn, I tried to help him up to the anchor which afforded a step and a resting place. After a good deal of wriggling he got on top.
After quite a number of days anchored to the ice, our captain pulled back to Dutch Harbor as our supplies had run out. The weather was nice and warm on all the trip and while we wanted to get through to Nome we rather enjoyed getting off the boat when it docked. While our boat waited in Dutch Harbor for the ice to break so we could get through to Nome, we found that the gamblers of the boats had set up their games of chance in every little cubby hole that they could get into: black jack, faro, craps, poker or any thing else to part the suckers from their grub stakes.
When the day came at last to pull out it seemed to be a race as to who
would get through first. We landed at Nome on the 17th of June; quite a few
boats had beaten us in. Our goods were finally thrown out on the beach after
many hours of waiting.
While on the boat Jack had become very friendly with two fellows. We agreed
to go in together in mining.
There are two small streams just the west side of Nome: the Snake River and the Penny River. When we got our camping stuff we went a couple of hundred feet past the toll bridge (10 cents to cross) and pitched our tents about fifty feet from the ocean's edge. On the second day Jack and one of our partners took a scouting expedition twenty miles or more up the beach and decided we would move up there to work the beach. So it was necessary to have a boat. It took about two weeks of our time before they located one for which we paid seventy-five dollars. It was a row boat, though we could and did have a small sail on it. So we loaded up and got to our diggings on the beach.
(Just a note here: While we were on the beach at Nome, every morning when we got up out of bed we would find that during the night more prospectors had pitched their tents all around us, until finally it was built in solidly.)
The place we started to work had about one foot of sand to bed rock (a strata of clay) and we would scrape off the top of that clay, after removing the foot of sand, and then run it through the rocker. There was a copper plate, covered with quick silver, the sand ran over before leaving the rocker. Fine gold would adhere to the copper plate and quick silver.
Our mining on the beach was not very lucrative. While we were working there we made about three dollars each a day except for two days when we took out about twenty dollars per day each. After thinking about that later I came to the conclusion that that part of the beach had been worked the summer before and they had likely missed the spot where we had taken out twenty dollars a day each.
We were on the beach July 4th, 1900. We thought we should celebrate on the tundra where a vein of ice was exposed. (Whether this was a remnant of the ice age, we speculated.) We had condensed milk and we decided to make ice cream. To do so we used a galvanized pail and put a small pail in the center and surrounded it with ice. It took lots of turning but the result was pretty good ice cream.
About July it was almost all daylight for 24 hours a day. I don't know how long the sun would disappear at night, but even with the twilight one could read a newspaper any time of night.
We were getting restless working and only making three dollars a day, so we and our partners talked it over and decided it was time to do something about it. Then one day Jack got in our boat to go to Nome to get our mail and look around; he put a little sail up and away he went. (Jack rather liked the ocean, I didn't.)
We expected Jack to come back the next day but he did not show up. I was uneasy as there was a violent storm raging. On the third morning the great breakers were coming in and cracking on the shore. I was just about in the notion of quitting to go and look for Jack. It was about 2:00 p.m.. Later, I looked up the beach and saw Jack coming, walking. He said he had passed our camp during the night and gone past about a mile and pulled in through the breakers. It was his only chance.
The rich diggings around Nome were out on some of the creeks where the gold taken out was coarse. Of course the claims were working and had been staked out in 1899. The richest claims were on Dexter and Anvil creeks. One morning Jack and I decided that I would go to Nome and then go out to the diggings to try to get a job. So I left with a blanket on my back and hip boots on my feet as there were two swift shallow rivers to ford about three miles from camp. I got to Nome in the afternoon and camped that night with some fellows we had gotten acquainted with previously.
Between where we worked on the beach and Nome (20 or 25 mi.) there were thousands of men and some women sluicing sand with every conceivable kind of apparatus from the gold pan to the rocker. There was a dredge boat working on Snake river just on the outskirts of Nome.
While we were camping at Nome a fellow died the next tent over from ours. He was buried on the hillside. About ten of us went to the funeral. The only ceremony was when some one started singing "Nearer My God to Thee". I don't know how the tune was, but the voices were plenty husky.
The next morning I left Nome at six o'clock a.m. and started walking out toward Anvil and Dexter creeks, which, as I remember, were about eight miles from Nome. The walking was hard work as the tundra would be soft one step and hard the next. So one step you would go down to your knees and the next the slush would no more than cover your foot. Along the trail going out there was a flume which carried water from the creeks to the city of Nome. Here and there along the flume there were water taps so you could get a drink when you wanted it. I guess the reason for the taps was if they were not there and some thirsty miner wanted a drink, it would be easy to get it with a pick.
I got to Dexter Creek, where a dozen men were shoveling sand
into sluice boxes. I asked for work, but they said they did not
need any more men. It was raining pretty hard, but I had on a slicker and
sou'wester and hip boots. So I went on to the next creek where there were
five or six men working, but I was told no more men unless it rained more,
so I gave it up as hopeless. I was now about thirty-five miles away from
camp so I started to retrace my steps. It was now about 9:00 a.m.. I went
back to Nome.
I was tired after walking over eight or ten miles of tundra but after I ate lunch I decided to keep walking until I got back to camp. In the meantime it kept drizzling rain. The nights had been getting darker as it was getting late in the summer. I walked until I was three or four miles from camp and came to the two rivers I had to ford. Owing to the darkness I could not see well enough to select the most shallow place. And instead of laying down my blanket and sleeping until morning, I picked up a rock as big as I could carry and went into the water. But the footing was slippery and I had to drop the rock. My hip boots filled with water and I thought the stream was going to take me, but somehow I staggered through and then I sat down on the bank of the stream and congratulated myself for being very lucky. I got back to camp about three o'clock a.m.. I had been walking almost continually for fifteen or sixteen hours. As a result of that walk I had a sore groin for three or four months after getting back to the States.
Our partners pulled out and took the boat to take their stuff to Nome. Jack walked to Nome to bring it back so we could take our stuff. Jack had some kind of a reflex which prompted him to pick up everything that he saw "as it may come in handy". So, the next day we loaded the boat with our camping paraphernalia. Then Jack insisted on putting in all the stuff that "may come in handy" even though we intended to take the first boat we could get back to Seattle. It was with much misgiving I got into the boat.
We got in the boat and pulled out through the surf and headed for Nome. We pulled out from about half a mile away, where the water was less disturbed than near the shore. We had gone but a short way when a little wave hit the boat and the water kept splashing into the boat. (The boat was all under water except about three inches.) I was scared.
I said, "Jack, let's pull for shore and unload this damn 'handy stuff'." Jack reluctantly agreed. I thought the boat would sink before we reached shore (after what seemed to me like an hour or two.) We unloaded plenty of surplus cargo and pulled out with a little sail and we soon arrived in Nome.
While waiting in Nome to arrange passage I got a few odd jobs around Nome at one dollar per hour. We pitched our tent on the bank of the Snake River and scouted around to find out what boat we could get back to Seattle and the cheapest fare. The boat we made arrangements to get to Seattle on was named the STEAMER ARGO and was only going to take six or seven passengers. It was not a passenger boat. The fare was thirty-five dollars to Seattle.
Three of the boys who got on the steamship with us were miners from Montana. The cook who was working his way back had been a salesman in New York. The boat was a flat bottom steam schooner with only one anchor. We nicknamed the boat the "FAST, COMMODIOUS, PALATIAL, FURIOUS STEAMSHIP ARGO". We loaded our boat up and pulled down to the mouth of Snake River, where we transferred to a dory which proceeded to take us out to the ARGO about a mile out to sea. The sea was very rough and I was good and sea sick before getting out of the dory.
This steam schooner we were on had only one anchor and no ballast when we left Nome. While the sea was calm we rather enjoyed ourselves sitting in the sun. I had told Jack I wanted to have a look at the sea when a boat was on a mountain of water one minute and in a valley the next. The next thing we knew Bering Sea got rough and with a bad storm and no ballast it's a wonder that ship ever made it to port. I was lying in my bunk and I was really sea sick when Jack poked his head in the door and said, "Dan, come on; now you can get a look at that 'mountain and valley'." I said, "I don't want to see anything. I don't care whether she goes up or down."
We'd had two days of the rough sea then she calmed down. The little cook
was quite a humorist. He got sea sick just as badly as I did, but even though
he was sick he would come along and sing "I'm a Jolly Sailor Lad". No one
joined in the chorus.
When we were nearing Dutch Harbor, they seemed to have a hard time finding
the entrance, owing to a dense fog and mist. I was glad to get in, as were
the other boys, and to get on land after the storm we had been in, on a boat
that was not fit for the scrap heap. How it passed any kind of inspection
is hard to surmise.
We were in Dutch Harbor ten or twelve days during that time. The captain hired us to go and get ballast and load it on the ship.
It was the middle of Sept. 1900 that we pulled out of Dutch Harbor bound for Seattle (so we thought), but when we arrived at the Pacific coast we were at Bandon, Oregon on the Coquelle River. It was near dusk when we got there but owing to fog and mist, and perhaps tide, the captain could not determine the entrance to the river. The Coast Guard ordered our captain "to stand by" until the next morning, which he did. The ship owner fooled us. We bought passage to Seattle, but they lied to us to get us to take the passage on the ARGO.
The next morning we entered the Coquelle River at Bandon
Oregon. After we passed inspection we debarked with our luggage. What stuff
we did not want, the little cook picked up. He said he was going to start
out with a pack on his back selling from town to town.
We took the question of fares up with the captain. It was agreed that he pay us seventy-five dollars each for fares to Seattle.
Bandon was sixty miles from Roseburg, Oregon where we would catch a train to Seattle. As there were eight of us, we hired two light rigs to take us. There was lots of fruit that could be purchased at farm houses along the way, and since we did not get much fruit in Alaska we took advantage of it.
We got to Roseburg the next afternoon and got a train for Seattle. We got
into Seattle the second day. The first thing we did after getting cleaned
up and getting new suits of clothes was to take what little gold we had to
the government in Seattle. We had to wait a few days. It amounted to one-hundred
and sixty seven dollars.
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Copyright 1999 by Evelyn Sichi
Link here for a photograph of Nome at the time of the Gold Rush.
