KLONDIKE, The, a famous gold-bearing stream which enters the Yukon, the principal river of the Yukon Territory, Canada, 45 miles below the mouth of Sixty Mile Creek. In re cent years the term Klondike is applied to the region surrounding the river and its tributaries, which lies between Alaska and the British pos sessions. As early as 1862 gold was discovered in Alaska, but no special notice was taken of it; 13 years later gold was found at the head of the Stikine River. In 1879, Juneau, a Frenchman, discovered gold in a creek which they named Gold Creek, and at the mouth of this creek founded a town first called Harris burg and later Juneau. In 1884 a rich find was reported on Stewart River, in the Yukon dis tnct, two years afterward gold was discovered on Forty-mile River close to the international boundary.
It was not till 1897 that the wonderful riches of the Klondike region were made known through George Carmack, who went from Illi nois to Alaska in 1890 and there married an Indian squaw. On 16 Aug. 1896 he discovered coarse gold on Rabbit Creek, afterward called Bonanza Creek; the discovery got wind, and immediately all the people in the neighborhood made a rush, for Bonanza Creek, which was staked from source to mouth. But it was not till the following summer that the outside world knew of the discovery, when a steamer reached Seattle with a load of gold from the Klondike. In the following year there was a great rush over the Chilkoot and White Passes and down the Yukon River to the district, no fewer than 28,000 persons entering the Terri tory. Dawson City, the first hut in which was built in September 1896, was founded, and in six months it had 500 houses, in 1901 had a population of 9,142, which had declined in 1911 to 3,103. Towns were also built at Granville and Grand Forks, and at White Horse at the northern terminus of the White Horse Railway.
The Klondike is not far from the Arctic regions, and for seven months of the year in tense cold prevails, varied by furious snow storms which begin in September and occur at intervals till May. The mean temperature at Dawson City is minus in January and 60° in July. By 20 October ice is formed over all the rivers, and the gravel deposits, from which the gold is mined, remain frozen winter and sum mer alike, and are covered by layers, from two feet to as much as 100 in depth of vegetable mold or amuck," also frozen into a solid mass. The conditions of gold mining in this region are therefore unique. The gravel must be thawed before it can be raised; and in the early days of mining in the Klondike, two methods, °ground-sluicing and shovelling-in' and °drifting," were employed, the cost of min ing running at from $10 to $25 a cubic yard. Steam-thawing was later introduced by McGillivray, a Californian mining engineer; in some nilnes pulsometers are used to thaw the pay-dirt in the drifts; the mechanical move ment of pay-dirt is accomplished by a self dumping cable tram called the "Dawson car rier,)) which carries a bucket with a capacity of from 9 to 11 cubic feet; and gold-washing and separating plant has been installed. Many rich claims have been worked; one, the Eldorado paystreak, four miles in length, yielded gold of the value of $25,000,000, or $1,200 a running foot for the bottom of the valley. The total value of production in 1887 was $70,000, the highest yield (1900) being valued at $22,000,000. There has since been a decline in value that for 1915 showing $4,758,098. From 1::5 to 1915 (inclusive) the total production was valued at $162,233,984. See ALASKA.