The Duck That Struck Gold
A holiday dinner turns into a prospecting claim when a bell boy discovers nuggets inside a Whidby Island duck.
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.
George Gibson, bell boy at the Hotel New Arctic, found two bright nuggets of virgin gold in the gizzard of a duck, which he had bought for Thanksgiving dinner. The nuggets were worth about $10. Gibson found out that the duck was bought from a farmer living near Oak Harbor on the north end of Whidby Island. Perhaps this discovery will start a second Klondike rush.
“Perhaps this discovery will start a second Klondike rush.”
While gold fever was mostly a thing of the past by 1923, the romanticization of the Klondike remained deep in the regional psyche. The story captures the persistent hope for sudden wealth in a state built on resource extraction.
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