Klondike Gold Rush Thesis

The idea of getting “rich quick” was one of the many challenges that people took on in the 1800s. This started the great race for gold that changed the whole course of American history. The article “The Klondike Gold Rush”, the passage from Woman Who Went to Alaska, and the video City of Gold each shape the understanding of the point of view of the miner’s lives. Each resource emphasized the hazardous and treacherous journey the miners experienced while searching for a single speck of gold.

In the article, “The Klondike Gold Rush”, the author’s perspective showed the dangers and challenges most miners, also known as stampeders, were exposed to while they attempted to find gold. For instance, “A three week trip, the miners had to survive many

The quote from this article highlights the dangers the miners had to overcome which included possibly losing their lives and leaving behind their families. Once the miners set out on the journey it was a battle between life and death. Another quote from the text includes, “Most stampeders knew little or nothing about where they were going, so pamphlets were available to help them on their way. Many of the pamphlets contained little or no real information and made outrageous claims or wealth to be had by everyone” (The Klondike Gold Rush, paragraph 3). This example revealed the unknowingness of the miners who set out for the journey. The pamphlets the stampeders were given, supposedly a helping source, encouraged miners to put their life on the line for gold. The pamphlets made the miners more enthusiastic of eventually finding gold and living a lush life.

In the passage it states, “Mining laws are very arbitrary and strictly enforced. A person wishing to prospect for gold must first procure a miner’s license, paying ten dollars for it. If anything is discovered, and he wishes to locate a claim, he visits the recorder’s office states his business, and is told to call again. In the meantime, men are sent to examine the locality and if anything of value is found, the man wishing to record the claim is told that it is already located” (Sullivan, paragraph 4). Based on the text, stampeders paid large quantities of money to first get the license to start the mining process. The miners who were lucky enough to reach gold were instantly tricked by the officials and later told the land had already been claimed. This was a way for many officials to take advantage of the miners. Another example that supports the author's point of view is, “When a man is compelled to pay one thousand dollars out of every ten thousand he digs from the ground, he will boast little of large ‘clean-ups’; and for this reason it is hard to estimate the real amount of gold extracted from the Klondike mines” (Sullivan, paragraph 9). The miners rarely knew the real amount of gold they had found because the officials taxed the miners quite rapidly after finding gold. For this reason,