A Klondike reading list: the Yukon gold rush in books
A surprising number of Canadians first encounter the word "Yukon" not in a geography lesson but on a casino lobby: Yukon Gold Casino has used the gold rush as its calling card since 2004. If the name made you curious about the real thing, these six books are the place to start.
1. Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896 to 1899, Pierre Berton
The standard narrative history, written by a man who grew up in Dawson City. Berton is a storyteller first, and the chapters on the Chilkoot Pass and the Dawson winter of 1897 are as vivid as anything in Canadian non-fiction.
2. Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike, Charlotte Gray
Gray follows six real people, among them a prospector, a priest, a businesswoman and a young Jack London, through the same two years. A good corrective to the lone-sourdough myth: most of the money in the Klondike was made selling things to miners.
3. The Call of the Wild and White Fang, Jack London
London spent one miserable winter in the Klondike and mined it for the rest of his career. Read both back to back; one is a story of a dog going wild, the other of a wolf coming home.
4. The Cremation of Sam McGee, Robert Service
Service arrived after the rush but wrote its best-known lines. The poem is short, grimly funny, and still recited in Yukon schools.
5. Klondike Women: True Tales of the 1897 to 1898 Gold Rush, Melanie Mayer
Letters and diaries of women who crossed the passes, ran roadhouses, staked claims and, in a few cases, left richer than the men.
6. The Klondike Quest: A Photographic Essay, Pierre Berton
For the pictures. The line of prospectors on the Chilkoot's "golden stairs" is one of the defining photographs of the nineteenth century.
Gold rush, the game version
The Klondike's lasting appeal is the fantasy of a single lucky strike, which is also the pitch of every progressive jackpot slot. If that is what brought you here, our Yukon Gold Casino review explains how its "150 chances" offer actually works, and the Gold Blitz Infinite review covers the gold-themed slot of the moment. Read the history first; the odds were better in 1897, and they were not good.