North of 53°
The Wild Days of the Alaska-Yukon Mining Frontier, 1870-1914
“Saints and sinners, whores and housewives, swindlers and laborers alike attempted a hasty adjustment to novel conditions in a land that seemed strange and forbidding,” writes William R. Hunt in his narrative history of Alaska mining. Hunt offers an exciting anecdotal account that follows hungry prospectors, canny shopkeepers, hopeful hangers-on, and crafty lawyers through the gold mining camps and temporary towns of nineteenth-century Alaska. Hunt has hiked and mined many of the same claims he writes about in the book, and North of 53 offers a rare glimpse into far-flung communities from Skagway to the Yukon to the deep interior of Alaska to the Ididarod and Nome on the Bering Sea.
William R. Hunt was professor of history at the University of Alaska. He worked as a miner, teacher, and journalist, as well as being actively involved in eight historical societies.
Part I: Early Days on the Yukon
1. Opening the Land
2. Early Trading
3. Mining
4. Forty Mile
5. Circle, 1893-96
Part II: The Klondike Era
6. Seattle Gets the News
7. Skagway and Soapy Smith
8. Chilkoot and White Passes
9. Army Help and Arctic Fraud
10. Yukon Voyage
11. Glacier Madness
12. Overland and River Routes
13. Dawson City
14. Soldiers, Sailors, and Settlers on the Yukon
Part III: Nome, Fairbanks, and Other Alaskan Camps
15. Nome-The American Klondike, 1899
16. The Turbulent Scene, 1900
17. Lawless Camp: Nome in 1900-1901
18. Judge Wickersham in Eagle and Nome
19. The Founding of Fairbanks
20. Tanana Valley Style
21. Founder-Swindler Barnette of Fairbanks
22. Restless Camps and Busy Trails
23. Soldier on the Yukon
24. High Rollers and Their Recreations
25. Settlings Down: George Pilcher, Will Ballou, and the Lomens
26. The Guggenheims Come to Alaska
27. Other Camps
Part IV: The Different Frontier?
28. Law and Order
29. The U.S. Government’s Role in Alaska
30. Natives and the Mining Frontier
31. Northern Journalism
32. Labor Strife
33. James Wickersham and Gold Land Politics
34. The Literary Frontier
