"Gold at Fortymile Creek" tells the story of the search for gold in the Yukon basin prior to the famous Klondike gold rush of 1896-8. Based on the accounts of dozens of prospectors who visited the area and searched for gold between 1873 and 1896, it chronicles the trials, heartbreaks and successes as the number of goldseekers grew and a unique community of hardy individualists set the stage for the world's most famous goldrush. With names like Swiftwater Bill, Crooked Leg Louie, Slobbery Tom and Tin Kettle George, these men lived in total isolation beyond the borders of civilization. They were eccentrics and outcasts who shaped their own rules, their own justice and their own social order. "Gold at Fortymile Creek" follows the first goldseekers from their arrival in 1873 till 1896 when George Carmack, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie started the Klondike Stampede.
Beginning along the burs of the great Yukon River, it follows the gradual growth of the search for gold over thousands of square miles and it describes the methods of mining, the significant discoveries and the rough-and-ready settlements which grew up around each new find, including Fort Reliance, Forty Mile, Circle and Dawson City. Into this no-man's-land without boundaries came the harbingers of civilization: the surveyors and the North West Mounted Police who established law, peace and order. They were joined by traders, missionaries, gentlemen travellers, journalists, pioneer women and countless other followers of the quest for gold. "Gold at Fortymile Creek" tells about survival and hardship, life and death, good times and bad in the harshest wilderness on the continent. It is a readable and thoroughly researched account of the search for gold and the opening of one of the last frontiers. Michael Gates is Curator of Collections for Klondike National Historic Sites in Dawson City, Yukon. This book is intended for.