The most powerful impression left on me by the 2009 Yukon 1000 Mile Canoe Race is from the experience of paddling between the towns of Whitehorse and Dawson City in Yukon Territory, Canada. Both cities owe their existence to the Klondike gold rush of the late 1800s.

The Rush started on August 16, 1896, when George Washington Carmack and two Native American friends found a gold nugget in Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River that empties into the Yukon River. The rest of the world caught Klondike gold fever the following July (1897) when 68 scraggly miners, some carrying buckets of gold nuggets, arrived at the docks in Seattle and San Francisco with more than two tons of gold. This touched off the largest gold rush in history as an estimated 100,000 people quit their jobs, sold their possessions and headed for the Yukon.

In Seattle, streetcar drivers left their trolleys, a quarter of the police force quit and even the mayor resigned to buy a steamboat to carry passengers to Alaska. The gold seekers were called “stampeders,” and quickly overwhelmed the existing transportation options. The stampeders who made it to Alaska still had hundreds of miles to travel before arriving at the gold fields. Many were forced to turn back as they found the cost of hiring horses or mules to move their provisions to be too expensive. For the more determined Klondikers there several trails to choose from. One of the trails, Dyea Trail, featured the infamous Chilkoot Pass – a severe, four mile long slope that was too steep for pack animals to traverse.