Down the Yukon (14 page)

In “The Spell of the Yukon,” Robert W. Service wrote, “There's a land—oh, it beckons and beckons/And I want to go back—and I will.”

That's exactly how I felt when I finished writing
Jason's Gold,
the story of Jason Hawthorn's eleven-month journey from New York City to Dawson City in 1897–98. My heart was still in the Northland; I had to go back and find out what came next for Jason. The result is
Down the Yukon.

At the end of the first book Jamie had promised she'd come back, and there was so much left to explore—not only Jason and Jamie's relationship but the Yukon River itself. Together, the two of them might float clear across Alaska. The historical context, I realized, would be the 1899 rush to Cape Nome, where gold had been discovered in the beaches of the Bering Sea.

News of the discovery at Nome had an electrifying effect on Dawson City. As many as eight thousand disappointed Klondikers left Dawson in a single week in the summer of '99. Many of those were going to give it one last try in Nome, and the Yukon was their highway for most of the route.

In addition to those bound for salt water, there were numbers of Klondikers who traveled down the Yukon and then up virtually every one of its tributaries, searching Alaska for a new bonanza or simply a place to live in the wilderness. Some of these settled far up the Koyukuk River, even north of the Arctic Circle.

I've had a longtime fascination with the Koyukuk that came from reading books by two acclaimed conservationists, Margaret Murie and Robert Marshall, who knew the river intimately. Mardy Murie's book is
Two in the Far North
(Alaska Northwest Books, 1997 reprint) and Bob Marshall's is
Arctic Village
(University of Alaska Press, 1993 reprint).

In the early 1930s, Bob Marshall spent over a year in the settlement of Wiseman, upstream of Bettles. Some of its old-timers were Klondikers who'd left Dawson City in the summer of 1899. Marshall described Wiseman's small community of many races as “the happiest civilization of which I have knowledge.” Wishing great happiness for Jason and Jamie, I had them settle on the upper Koyukuk.

As in
Jason's Gold,
I strove to describe the geography and landscapes of
Down the Yukon
as accurately as possible. In regard to the plausibility of Yukon River sternwheelers managing the crossing of Norton Sound, I was amazed to read accounts of them moored in the mouth of the river at Nome, and then to find 1899 photographs depicting exactly that.

The idea of the attempt to float a hotel down the Yukon came from Arizona Charlie Meadows's announcement in real life that he would float his Palace Grand Theater in one piece from Dawson City to Nome. He abandoned the idea. Destroyed in the April fire of '99, the Palace Grand reopened in July, and remains standing today under another name.

Henry Brackett, the Sydney Mauler, is a fictional counterpart of an actual Australian boxer named Frank Slavin (“Sydney Cornstalk”) who fought a number of matches in Dawson City and was a former heavyweight champion of the British Empire. The subplot involving George Swink, a.k.a. Cornelius Donner, was inspired by a true-life twenty-five-thousand-mile detective saga involving arson and murder that began in Iowa and ended in Dawson City. The actual criminal's name was Frank Novak, and the detective was C. C. Perrin.

Dawson's Thanksgiving fire of '98 and the April 26 fire of '99 took place largely as described in the novel, though arson was not suspected in either event.

The names in
Down the Yukon
of Dawson's dance halls, theaters, gambling houses, saloons, banks, and hotels are the actual ones. I have portrayed or referred to many of Dawson's colorful historical characters in their actual context. These include Arizona Charlie Meadows, Irish Nellie Cashman, Little Margie Newman, Belinda Mulrooney, Calamity Jane, Joe Boyle, Big Alex McDonald, Swiftwater Bill Gates, Joseph Ladue, Buckskin Frank Leslie, George Washington Carmack, Dick Lowe, Jack Dalton, Captain Starnes, Waterfront Brown, Silent Sam Bonnifield, Louis Golden, One-Eyed Riley, Hamgrease Jimmy, the Evaporated Kid, and others. Incidentally, Wyatt Earp of Dodge City fame indeed surfaced in Nome as a saloon owner and boxing promoter.

Jason and Jamie, as well as Jason's brothers, Abe and Ethan, are entirely fictional. Burnt Paw's name is drawn from that of a village on the Porcupine River.

The North American Trading and Transportation Company and the Alaska Commercial Company are the names of the actual companies that supplied Dawson City and Nome. The idea of the former's breakup lottery was inspired by the annual lottery on the exact time of breakup on the Tanana River, which I recalled from my childhood in Alaska. The Great Race from Dawson City to Nome, sponsored by the Alaska Commercial Company, is fictional. The ancient portage trail between Kaltag on the Yukon River and Unalakleet on the Bering Sea is real. In modern times it is a section of the Iditarod dogsled race, which ends in Nome.

Once again I am indebted to Pierre Berton's superb history
Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896–1899
(Penguin, 1990 reprint). I would also point interested readers to William Haskell's period narrative,
Two Years in the Klondike and Alaskan Gold-Fields 1896–1898
(University of Alaska Press, 1997 reprint);
Women of the Klondike,
by Frances Backhouse (Whitecap Books, 1995);
The Miners,
by Robert Wallace, with photographs (Time/Life Books, 1976);
The Alaskans,
by Keith Wheeler, with photographs (Time/Life Books, 1977);
Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon,
by John Hildebrand (Houghton Mifflin, 1988); and
The Klondike Gold Rush—Photographs from 1896–99
(Wolf Creek Books, 1997).

As was the case with
Jason's Gold,
I was writing
Down the Yukon
exactly one hundred years after its events took place. My wife, Jean, and I hope to revisit Dawson City one of these years, and I have my heart set on seeing the Koyukuk River north of the Arctic Circle. I'd like to visit the setting that moved Bob Marshall to write these words: “It is impossible ever to evaluate just how much beauty adds to what is worthwhile in existence.”

 

Durango, Colorado
August 1999