AHS Blog
Date Posted: October 10, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Laura Samuelson, Director, Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum
We continue our look back at the 1900 Nome Gold Rush with more perspective from Wilfred A. McDaniel Sr. Here again are more excerpts from “Alaska Beckons” written by Wilfred in 1943. His love of Nome is quite evident in that his experiences in this wild land are still fresh in his mind four decades later. At the end of last week’s passage, Wilfred noted that “Alaska has her joking moods too, as we were soon to experience!” Well, let’s just see what he meant by that statement!
ALASKA BECKONS
By Wilfred A. McDaniel Sr.
October came at last, two weeks more of work—three at the most—and the season would end. Short, sunny days favored us as we strove to utilize the precious time. During the changing season, schools of porpoises and white whales were frequently seen off shore, and flocks of screaming gulls hovered over the sea, near shore or rested on the beach.
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JAMMIN’ TIL THE END – “October came at last, two weeks more of work—three
at the most—and the season would end. Short, sunny days favored us as we
strove to utilize the precious time.” Photo by Wilfred McDaniel from the
Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum Archives
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While using the sluice fork in the boxes, throwing out the heavy stones, which had accumulated during the sluicing, I was surprised to throw out a tomcod! Soon more appeared, some in fragments, cut up in the pump runner, others intact! I called to Ed, “Here’s where we have a fish dinner!” The astonished workmen peered into the sluice-boxes while fish continued to come from the pump, some flopping over the riffles, others not so fortunate! The tomcod season was on!
This latest prank of nature was, indeed, serious. The water supply was lessened and work stopped while the pump was opened and cleaned. The openings in the pump propeller would become choked by the fish, cutting off the water supply, and making it necessary to stop the engine and clear away the mess, resulting in a great loss of time. At times we were compelled to quit work entirely, as nothing could be accomplished! In an effort to prevent the fish from being drawn into the pump, a coarse screen was placed over the in-take at the submerged end of the suction pipe. This kept the tomcod out, but it soon collected a coating of sea moss, which eventually shut off the water, and merely shifted the problem.
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IT IS STILL STANDING! – This is the Crowley fuel office that remains in use today
at West E and Lomen Streets in Nome. The lower buildings are on River Street.
The one story cottage building is also remembered as the office of the Lomen
Commercial Company and later the Arctic Lighterage Company. It was built in
1906 as the residence of Alfred Guinan, manager of the Hot Air Mining Co.,
which operated near Glacier Creek. Photo by Wilfred McDaniel from the
Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum Archives
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The tomcod of these northern waters grow to a length of ten or fourteen inches, and in the late fall move in close to shore, in schools of countless numbers, where they remain for many months. When the arctic pack drifts in and the sea is ice-covered, they stay in the shallow water, close to shore where many are caught during the winter. Holes are cut through the thinner ice, and fishing is done by snagging them on a triple hook attached with line to a short stick. No bait is necessary, a red rag tied above the hook is sufficient to attract them.
When the flocks of seagulls move up the coast, indicating that the schools of tomcod were also moving on, work would be resumed. This condition continued to be, more or less, a problem for the remainder of the season.
Continued in the week of October 14.
Date Posted: October 8, 2013
Categories: 49 History
In this blog’s ongoing series of Alaska-themed board games, we bring you a few more inspired by the Klondike gold rush.
First, “Klondike Gold”:
In this game that dates to the 1940s, players travel a meandering route that was at least inspired by real geographic locations. Note Skagway in the lower left corner of the board (that’s Soapy Smith’s saloon on the waterfront), followed by the Chilkoot Pass, the Yukon River, and finally Dawson City and the Klondike gold fields.
Interesting that the cover art on the box so prominently features a totem pole, a cultural artifact not actually found in the Klondike:
Next we have “The Klondike Puzzle,” a geographically unaspiring game, circa 1897:
The object of the hand-held game was to maneuver the board to get three oddly shaped gold nuggets to fall into the center pan. What the game lacked in cartographic ambition it made up for in fun (I hope).
Next, “The Klondike Game,” year unknown:
What’s most interesting about this game is not the board, but the box:
It bills itself as “a game of adventure”—but that’s a mighty pastoral scene featuring some well-fed miners and an awfully placid Yukon River. Contrast it with “The Game of Going to the Klondike” (note the human skull in the lower left!):
Stay tuned to this blog for more board game fun in the coming weeks.
Date Posted: October 1, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Laura Samuelson, Director, Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum, Nome, Alaska
In an attempt to reincarnate the spirit of the 1900 Nome Gold Rush, the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum presents “The 1900 Diary of Wilfred A. McDaniel.” Excerpts from Wilfred’s October 1900 passages will appear this month here on “49 History” – the blog of the Alaska Historical Society.
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| Diarist Wilfred A. McDaniel |
Wilfred McDaniel was 25 years old when he first landed at Nome in June 1900 in the midst of the largest gold rush in Alaska. Wilfred was a gifted photographer, writer, artist, poet and an amateur dentist. During the eight years he lived in Nome he lugged his 20-pound Kodak camera from town to beach claim through rugged creeks and mosquito infested tundra, during powerful Bering Sea storms and furious blizzards. All the while he wrote descriptive letters to his parents in California and maintained a diary covering almost every day he lived on the coast west of Nome.
The result of this determined perseverance is the documentation of the lives of successful beach miners in the Nome gold rush era as well as an insight into the Eskimo people who lived at the Penny, Cripple and Sinuk Rivers at that time. Wilfred died at the age of 80 in 1954, however his thoughts, memories and love of Nome are preserved forever as his legacy in the “McDaniel Family Collection” now owned by and on exhibit at Nome’s Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum.
This diary was painstakingly transcribed and proofed by museum staff from the original three by five inch journal book kept in Wilfred’s pocket throughout the summer of 1900. The spelling errors are all his!
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LIFE IS A BEACH – 1900 miner Ed McDaniel enjoys
a rare moment of peace AND quiet in front of his
driftwood cabin home five miles from Nome.
Photo by Wilfred McDaniel from the Carrie M. McLain
Memorial Museum Archives |
In 1898, the Three Lucky Swedes discovered gold at Anvil Creek. Over the next winter, miners left the Canadian Klondike and streamed into this area mushing dog teams, walking and even riding bikes down the frozen Yukon River to the Bering Sea. By the summer of 1899 all the creeks had been staked. In late July 1899, when we were called Anvil City, there were hundreds of frustrated miners with no ground to dig. As luck would have it, as the story goes, one of the soldiers who was here to help keep the peace ran his hand through the beach sands and found GOLD! There was gold on the beach!
In his September diary, Wilfred concluded his eye witness account of the treacherous and unpredicted Bering Sea storm of September 9 and 10, 1900, which devastated Nome. This week, armed with the essential gold miner’s trait of optimism, the McDaniel brothers make an asset out of the torrential rains.
ALASKA BECKONS
By Wilfred A. McDaniel Sr.
Following the destructive period of the September 9th and 10th storm, heavy rains fell, and the rough sea prevented any reconstructive work to be started. High tides still prevailed, and this condition would have made impossible any attempt to mine the lower ground, had we been equipped to do so. The heavy rains created a considerable flow of water in many of the draws and gullies draining the tundra, affording an abundance of water for sluicing, during the run-off. This we decided to make use of, and by digging a system of ditches the water was concentrated. Sluice-boxes were set up on the upper part of the beach and work was resumed. While the pay was not as good in this portion of the beach, the fact that the water cost nothing partly off-set the difference, and furthermore, there was no loss of time which would have resulted, had we waited for fair weather in which to get engine and pump in operation. After a few days the rain gradually decreased, with a corresponding falling off in the water from the tundra, and after about ten days of sluicing we were forced to abandon the ditch supply, it becoming inadequate.
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TURN BAD INTO GOOD – “The heavy rains created a considerable flow of water
in many of the draws and gullies draining the tundra, affording an abundance
of water for sluicing, during the run-off.” Photo by Wilfred McDaniel from the
Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum Archives |
As September advanced, calm weather came, clear and colder, but promising a few weeks more of moderate weather, during what remained of the short open season.
The engine had received no damage. A thorough overhauling and cleaning to remove sand and grit, and it was soon put in running order. Pump foundations were leveled, suction pipe attached and sluicing soon went on as before. However, our troubles were not yet over. From all the varied difficulties experienced so far, nothing now seemed possible to happen which had not already occurred and which, in a measure, we were prepared for. But Alaska has her joking moods too, as we were soon to experience!
Check back the week of October 7 for more of the McDaniel diary.
Date Posted: September 29, 2013
Categories: 49 History
The discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late nineteenth century set off not only a rush of prospectors to the North, but also a scramble by board game companies to capitalize on the gold craze. The image to the right is the game board of “Horsman’s Game of Klondike,” released in 1897 by E. L. Horsman and Maraquita Bangs of New York.
One of many such games produced in this era, Horsman’s promises “a game of surprises and divers [diverse?] dangers and success to the persevering.”
Note that the two primary routes to Dawson City—the Yukon River and the overland (i.e., Chilkoot Pass) route—are both available to players, though the numbering of the spaces begins at “1” at the mouth of the Yukon (perhaps prioritizing that particular corridor?).
You may notice that the makers of the game took a few liberties with—or outright ignored—geographic reality. Despite being a district of the Northwest Territories at the time, the Yukon is misidentified as “British Columbia.” Note also that Juneau appears to be a landlocked city with the ocean nowhere in sight!
Horsman’s and many other Alaska-Yukon-themed board games have been collected and preserved by the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks. Stay tuned to this blog…more games will be posted in the coming weeks…
Date Posted: September 22, 2013
Categories: 49 History
Susannah Dowds, as part of her research for her dissertation, Alaska Sourdough: Bread Beards and Yeast, is gathering sourdough starters from across the state. If you have a starter and a story, bring both to the 2013 Museums Alaska and Alaska Historical Society Conference and become part of the narrative!
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Photo credit: Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center
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Sourdough starter is easily transported when dehydrated; here are instructions on how to dry your yeast:
1. Feed your starter a few hours beforehand, so that it’s at its peak ripeness.
2. Drop about two tablespoons of the starter onto a sheet of parchment paper or a clean and use a flexible spatula to spread it as thinly as you can all over the sheet.
3. Place the sheet on a cooling rack and set aside until dry. (This could take anywhere from a few hours to a day.)
4. Break the dehydrated starter into pieces, place in a freezer bag and put in a baggie.
If you have any questions, please contact Susanna at stdowds@alaska.edu. Susanna is currently completing a Master’s Degree in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
