On July 17, 1897, at 6 a.m., the steamship Portland arrives in Seattle from Alaska with 68 miners and a cargo of "more than a ton of solid gold" from the banks of the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory. This marks the beginning of a massive rush to the goldfields of Canada, and a period of prosperity in King County that will last more than a dozen years.
Klondike Gold Rush begins on July 17, 1897.
- By Greg Lange
- Posted 1/15/1999
- HistoryLink.org Essay 699
Sources:
James R. Warren and William R. McCoy, Highlights of Seattle's History Illustrated (Seattle: Historical Society of Seattle and King County, 1982), 23. See also Paul Dorpat, Seattle Now and Then [Volume 1] (Seattle: Tartu Publications, 1984), Story 25; Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 99-130.
Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
