Essay On Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush was a big leap in history. America would have not encountered things today without the exploration and excavation of the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike gold rush was one of the biggest gold rushes in history. It was a time of life, death, and fortune. There was many dangers on the journey to the gold. This was a very dangerous time full of below freezing temperatures with dangerous animals. They had to go through mountain passs and dangerous valleys.

There was a lot of animals in the gold rush. They were beaten and forced to work. They were used as sled dogs to carry them and their supplies up and down the hills and mountains. Animals were treated very bad during the gold rush. They would get fed barely anything each day. You would not want to be a dog during their time. They were not man's best friend, more like man’s best work tool.

The people were not in a very good working condition either. They sometimes wouldn’t want to try to get through the crowd so they would sleep in the mines. They set up tents inches away from each other. It was like a small city of tents. There were mines scattering the hillside. They were surrounded by rivers and lakes

where they were looking for gold. They were panning in the water to have a chance to get a small amount of gold in the bottom of the pan. There could be around a dozen people crammed into one tent. They had to fit huge families into 1 small tent. There were even small children growing up in the small tent they called home.
People would stay in these tents for years hoping they would make a fortune off the gold.

People after a few months of being there noticed that there wasn’t millions of tons of gold like the man said when he had found the gold in the Klondike river. Gold wasn’t often found in the yukon before the Klondike, people didn’t venture into the Yukon to find a fortune. The fortune wasn’t found on the surface. The gold would be found in about a few yards underground. They had to dig through the frozen ground that would be as hard as stone. The permafrost was feet down and needed heavy equipment and a lot of time to get through. There was a lot of labor in these camps. There were starting to be jobs opening to look for the gold that would get a small share of the fortune that their bosses would

get.
There were people that wouldn’t sleep at all some days. They would be so encouraged by the gold that you couldn’t stop them. They had hours of swinging a pickaxe. People would also eat very little. They would stop as little as possible.They would eat only when it was essential. They had bugs crawling on them and sweat dripping down their bodies. They would also get diseases from all the bad living styles. They would rarely ever take a shower or clean their clothes.
They would have to set small fires in the mines to keep the workers warm. They could die of hypothermia because they would still get snow and wind inside the caves. There were dead bodies found every few days. The caves were supported by wooden beams. There were still a few cave ins every year. That is also a factor to bring into mining plans. There were people making their own personal mines to try to find where all the gold would be found.
The Klondike gold rush emptied out some cities and towns. Hundreds of thousands set out, little did they know that little of them would return back. Over 29 million dollars was found in gold in the Klondike gold rush. They were short of the labor that was put into finding the gold and the time spent there.