All for the Greed of Gold: Will Woodin's Klondike Adventure
Edited by Catherine Holder Spude; Washington State University Press; 2016; $27.95
What it's about: Will Woodin left Seattle March 1, 1898, for the Yukon Gold Rush, returning 18 months later. Woodin's diaries and a 1910 memoir detail the difficulties he encountered taking a less-well-known route to Dawson via the White Pass and Tutshi trails. En route he found more camaraderie and cooperation among the working-class men than he expected. The young stampeder also delivers some perceptive observations concerning late 19th century values, economics and social structures.
Editor Spude has written or edited five books on the Klondike gold rush. "My previous writings focused on the mythology, social structure and economy of Skagway," she said in a press release. "Turning Will's observations into a narrative allowed me to venture beyond the boundaries of that port town to the reason so many people went north — the gold rush itself."
Excerpt: The people headed for the Klondike had to cross one of two passes: the Chilkoot or the White Pass. The former pass was shorter than the latter by five miles, but the stampeders who used it climbed 200 feet higher, much of it at an incline too steep for pack animals. As a result, those whose who wanted to pack their goods on oxen, mules, or horses were forced to use the White Pass …
Jay Woodin spent the fall of 1897 packing supplies over the White Pass and was thoroughly familiar with the route. He knew what he was doing when he decided to use horses to pack their outfit. Wealthier individuals usually hired packers who owned one or two dozen pack animals, so the 40-mile trip could be traversed in two or three days. The Woodins, with their two horses brought with great care from Seattle, required a month to transfer their outfit and the supplies that Jay Woodin intended to sell along the way.
Will never states how many supplies the five of them packed over the pass in March 1898. At the border, which coincided with the summit of the pass, the Canadians required each prospective miner to have a year's supply of food. Most sources suggest this amounted to 1,500 pounds per person. In addition, the shared equipment, such as tents and cooking utensils, and tools for cutting wood and building boats and shelters, not to mention mining implements, could weigh another ton. For the Woodin party of five, these supplies and equipment probably weighed close to 5 tons. Because they needed to purchase hay and grain for the two horses, they had that much more to pack.