The Klondike Horse Glut Comes Home to Seattle
More than a hundred work horses sent north for the gold rush are back in Seattle, and the bottom has dropped out of the local market.
Within the past three weeks over 100 head of work horses have come down from Skagway and Dyea to Seattle. There are too many horses up there for all to be kept profitably employed at the present time. The principal part of the travel to the Yukon basin seems just now to be directed via the all-steamer route. While there is a steady stream of people going over the trails, the number is not as large as anticipated, and consequently horseflesh is not at the premium expected. The return of these horses has had a quieting effect on the markets of the Sound, with the result that there is very little doing. O. H. Holcomb Co., leading horse dealers, report sales rather slow for the week.
“There are too many horses up there for all to be kept profitably employed at the present time.”
The Klondike stampede turned Seattle into a staging ground for the North, but the expected torrent of travelers never fully materialized. When the horses and gear came back, the city got a lesson in speculative logistics: boomtown demand can vanish as fast as it appears. It is the same pattern that shows up today whenever a resource rush or housing boom outruns the people and money meant to sustain it.
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