My research into Dawson City for my Historical Fiction novel: A Drink of Darkness
Gold was discovered in the Klondike in August of 1896 in a small tributary in the sprawling Yukon River. Due to slow communications, the rest of the world didn’t hear about it until July of 1897, after the Excelsior pulled into Seattle with “A ton of Gold.” A million people made plans to head north. Over 100,000 people actually crossed the Canadian border, taking one of few routes to the Klondike gold fields.
They could get to Skagway and take the “short,” treacherous route over the Chilkoot Pass or White Pass. Too steep for horses, they carried their 1000 lbs of goods mandated by the Canadian government on their backs. It took an average of 40 trips over 33 miles to cart the goods over the passes to Bennet City, where then the next leg was via river. This exercise took almost 4 months to complete.
Or they could take the 1600-mile, more expensive, all-water-route. They would travel by steamer from Seattle to St. Michael. Then they could take another boat up the Yukon. The steamers only ran from June until the end of September, when the river was free of ice. In the summer of 1898, the water levels were at record lows and the steamers got stuck multiple times, stretching the journey from 10 days into over two weeks.
In the summer of 1898, 40,000 people passed through Dawson City. A brash boom-town already calling itself the “Paris of the North.” During its boom from 1897-1899, it would be the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnepeg. By the time the “Stampeders” reached the Yukon, most of the best claims had already been staked. People had been mining for gold in the region for over 10 years. When miners close by heard of the strike, they quickly moved in and staked the best claims, leaving little to nothing for the men who arrived by 1898.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we writers are often told, “Write what you know.” I know what it is like to live in Alaska, and work in the extreme cold (the coldest temperature I have ever worked in was -65 with WC of -80). I know what it is like to be really remote with no internet, power, cell service, running water and other basic services. But going back to another period in time is a completely different story.
For my Historical Fiction, A Drink of Darkness, set in December of 1898, the peak of the boom in Dawson City, I needed to do some detailed research to give the story more depth. I used several sources, but this blog post is going to focus on the archived photographs from the Alaska Digital Archives. It is a compilation of historical photographs from Alaska’s past, taken from various resources (UAA, UAF, Alaska’s libraries and records) and digitized into one location. You can view and search them here:
It is free to view these photos online, but in order to use these photos for a blog or website, permission must be granted from the Archives. You can find the form and instructions to do so like I did on their website.
https://library.alaska.gov/vilda_rights.html
Layout of Streets and Businesses
I started by searching through the archived photos of Dawson. I wanted to get a feel for the layout of the streets and the way the buildings looked. Built at a rapid pace on a muddy turn of the Yukon River, the first year it was mostly tents, yurts and three-sided log cabins. There was no sewage system or electric grid. Most heat was either wood or fuel oil.
Wickersham State Historic Site. Photographs, 1882-1930s. ASL-PCA-277
Note how the cart is buried up to its axles in the mud. Dawson was built on the mudflats of the Yukon River and extremely prone to flooding. The streets through downtown were unpaved in this period
They didn’t account for the spring flooding of the Yukon River or subsidence into the mud. As time went on, more “permanent buildings” were constructed. However, there were multiple fires. The worst being in April of 1899. Before this, there was no sewage/plumbing system downtown. After this, the new buildings were mostly finished wood instead of log construction. These details are important to my research both in showing the crude conditions in which my main character Helena had to live, but in determining which buildings belong to which era of Dawson. They were also helpful in understanding how people dressed when out on the street.
Image P-41-161
P. E. Larss Photograph Collection, 1898-1904. ASL-PCA-41
Note the crude log construction in this photo and the lack of telegraph lines (though there appear to be poles with cable in the background-the system was under construction, completed in summer of 1899). This photo is probably from 1898, before the large fire that devastated the downtown.
It is also critical to note how the hills and river looked. This land is similar to where our cabin is in Chicken with boreal forests containing spruce, birch and willow. At roughly the same latitude as Chicken and Fairbanks, it is also prone to permafrost. Due to all of the mining and need for wood, the trees were clear cut around Dawson by the winter of 1898, leaving Midnight Dome, the mountain behind the city, bare to the weather.
Image P-277-001-58
Wickersham State Historic Site. Photographs, 1882-1930s. ASL-PCA-277
The lack of telegraph lines and street lamps indicates the above photo was once again probably from 1898
Image P-277-001-81
Wickersham State Historic Site. Photographs, 1882-1930s. ASL-PCA-277
This is another view of Fronts Street. The better constructed buildings and docks along with the telegraph lines running along the water lead me to believe this photo has to post-date the fire of April 26, 1899 which leveled the waterfront.
I was also able to get an understanding for which businesses and Saloons were actually open the year Helena would have been in Dawson, along with an idea of the location of buildings critical to my plot (the Royal Mounted Police Barracks from which Liam and Zhang break into/out of at one point in the story).
P. E. Larss Photograph Collection, 1898-1904. ASL-PCA-41
There were fantastic pictures of the boats pulling into Dawson. I used these, along with my other references to show what Helena’s arrival into the “Paris of the North” would have been like.
Image P-41-41
P. E. Larss Photograph Collection, 1898-1904. ASL-PCA-41
Pictures of steamers waiting to load/unload. Note the tents pitched right next to the river, along with the small boats just left along the shore. In the summer of 1898, boats pulled into Dawson by the hundreds nightly. But could you imagine wintering in the Yukon in a tent? Not to mention, the Yukon is notorious for flooding in the spring. Just ask the residents of Eagle, AK:
Communications/transport of goods/travel
Dawson had a telegraph installed by summer of 1899, but little other communication to the outside world. The Yukon froze October 31, 1898. Steamer travel would have ceased weeks before as the river began to clog with ice (starts to happen beginning of October, pictures I reviewed online indicate mid-to end of September was the last Steamer out). Once the river freezes, the only way to transport supplies was by dog sled. This was treacherous at best, presuming the aforementioned passes were open. Skagway to Dawson was 444 miles over rough trails prone to avalanche, but a few brave souls did it for profit.
Image P-41-10
P. E. Larss Photograph Collection, 1898-1904. ASL-PCA-41
This is critical to my plot as well, both stranding Helena in Dawson for the winter (the Yukon typically won’t completely break up until May, with the first steamer arriving from Seattle until June). She then has to survive the boomtown madness. It is also critical to Liam. He needs to contact his brothers in Sitka and his oldest brother Jack, who is on the American side of the border, scouring the gold rush towns of Jack Wade, Steel Creek, Chicken and Eagle. The only means of communication by December of 1898 would have been mail delivered by dog sled.
According to the unofficial census taken by the Mounties, approximately 16,000 people wintered in Dawson, but only 500 of them were women. Something else is stalking the Yukon in the winter of 1898. Something deadlier than typhus or scurvy.
Helena will struggle to resist the Drink of Darkness. The taste is to die for.
Thanks for reading! For my next blog, I will be talking about my research into the real ladies of the night of Dawson City and other boom towns of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush.
