The Klondike Gold Rush Comes Home
A staggering $500,000 in gold dust arrives in Seattle aboard the steamer Queen, marking a record-breaking speed for the journey from Dawson.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A half-million dollars in mining gold! That is the estimated value of the treasure brought down on the steamer Queen, which arrived in Seattle this morning at 1 o'clock. The party who possessed this, to the last man, were rugged and grizzled Klondikers. According to Mr. Curtis, the purser of the Queen, the richest men in the crowd were Sam Bedrock, Custer, and Wilkinson. Bedrock is said to have brought out some pounds of gold dust, amounting to about $150,000. The gold possessed by the other two men could not be ascertained. The rest of the men kept their gold in their rooms and talked little. The Klondikers came down from Dawson to Seattle in exactly 11 days. This is record-breaking time. Leaving Dawson June 29, they went to Bennett by steamer, where they caught one of the trains of the White Pass & Yukon railway, operating over the recently extended road, and came into Skagway, arriving there on July 4, making the trip from the Klondike capital in five days. Leaving Skagway on the evening of the Fourth on the Queen, they arrived in Seattle seven days later.
“The party who possessed this, to the last man, were rugged and grizzled Klondikers.”
The 1899 Klondike gold rush turned Seattle into a global boomtown overnight, establishing the city’s identity as the primary gateway to Alaska. Today, that same spirit of rapid resource extraction and frantic commercial expansion continues to shape Seattle’s skyline, though the 'gold' is now tech equity and the boom-and-bust cycle remains a defining feature of the city's economic life.
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