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Seattle, Washington 2007

Weekend trip from September 1st to 3rd, 2007 to Seattle, Washington including a day trip to the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon.

2007 September 1 2 3

Aquarium (130) Erica (29) Portland (157) Ruben (17) Seattle (387)

All

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Sign at the entrance of the National Park "Klondike Gold Rush", which can be visited free of charge.
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Eighty gold bars. Just replicas though.
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Gold Magic Gold captures imaginations and has been valued by civilizations throughout history. Its scarcity, durability, and luster all add to its value. The hope of "striking it rich" has sparked gold rushes around the world. Gold feels heavy because it is very dense compared with many other materials. For example, gold's density is twice that of lead. Density is the ratio of mass to volume.
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Desperate Times The 1890s were a turbulent time for the United States. A rapidly changing country and a deep depression formed the backdrop to what was ironically termed "The Gay 90s." During the early 1890s, Seattle was rebuilding from The Great Fire of 1889. Due to the nationwide depression, business was at a standstill and unemployment was widespread. Many citizens, forlorn and hungry, longed for a way out.
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In the Nation The Panic of 1893 A series of financial shocks undermined public confidence and led to the Financial Panic of 1893 and a deep, nationwide depression. A number or large railroad companies failed. Across the coutnry over 18,000 businesses went bankrupt, causing widespread unemployment and hardship for millions. The depression persisted for most of the remainder of the decade. The Gold Debate In the mid-1890s, money in the United States was based on the "gold standard". Any printed bill was backed by an equal amount of gold held in reserve by the government. In 1896, some called for an end to the gold standard. They believed that the scarcity of gold limited the amount of money in circulation and unjustly harmed the nation's workers. They advocated "bimetalism" - printed money backed by an equal amount of gold OR silver. This, they argued, would put more money in circulation and aid the struggling economy. The intense national debate over the gold standard propelled the Klondike Gold Rush into the national spotlight. At the end of the 19th century, the United States was rapidly changing from a farm-based society into an industrial giant. Cities, flooded with people looking for work, became dreary, polluted and crime-ridden. Many people lived in squalid conditions. Disease was rampant. A few wealthy industrialists lived extravagant, showy lives.
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In Seattle The Great Fire of 1889 On June 6, 1889, a fire started in a cabinet shop at what is now the corner of Madison Street and 1st Avenue. The fire quickly spread through the city's wood-frame buildings. Nearly the entire business district was destroyed. Rebuilding began immediately. Streets were widened and multi-story buildings of brick and stone rose from the ashes. Ironically, the devestating fire helped transform Seattle from a small town to a city. The Bubble Bursts Seattle's post-fire building boom came to a sudden halt following the Panic of 1893. Eleven Seattle banks closed and local land values fell by as much as eighty percent. Business closures led to massive job layoffs and unemployment. On the heels of the Great Fire of 1889, the depression hit Seattle especially hard and touched all tiers of society. Important Links In 1887, Seattle became the West coast terminus for the Great Northern Railway, creating a rail-link with other agricultural areas. Rail service beyond Puget Sound expanded, and by 1897 three American and one Canadian railroad offered service to Seattle. By the early 1890s, steamship companies helped make Seattle a hub for the shipping of freight and passengers to Alaska. These connections enabled Seattle businesses to ship lumber, coal, fish, and agricultural products easily to other parts of the country.
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Here are the first two of five participants of the Klondike goldrush. Images von "John Nordstrom" and "William Shape". Their biography follows in the next images.
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Three more participants of the Klondike goldrush, "Ethel Anderson", "Lucille Hunter" and "Henry Daum".
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Biography of John Nordstrom John Nordstrom came to America from Sweden in 1887 at the age of 16 with five dollars in his pocket and unable to speak a word of English. For the next ten years he worked his way from New York to California and up the coast to Washington, laboring in logging camps and mines. In 1896, determined to become a farmer, he bought twenty acres of land near Arlington. Realizing he couldn't make a living off farming alone, he went to work at a nearby logging camp. Biography of William Shape In the summer of 1897, 30 year-old William Shape was living with his wife and two small sons in New York City. His parents, immigrants from Germany, had become wealthy in the United States. As a result, William was well educated and had traveled to Europe on several occasions. He had dabbled in a variety of careers, including apprenticing as a goldsmith in Zurich where he met his wife.
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Biography of Ethel Anderson In 1897, Ethel Anderson was a young child. Later in life she wrote about her life in Bellingham, Washington before the gold rush: "They called the hard times a 'panic' but why it came, no one knew. ...[M]oney began to disappear and no one had any work. For a while our papa cut firewood for the railway for a dollar a day - a fourteen-hour day. ... When our food supply began to run low he would strike out, gun in hand. ... No need to carry a lunch for every homesteader along the way would say, 'Put your feet under the table and tell us the news.' Every traveler was a walking newspaper, and in hard times the farmer alone was well fed. Biography of Lucille Hunter Lucille Hunter was born in the Midwest about 1880. She was African-American and knew about hard work. Later in life, she would tell friends that by the age of 13 she was "working like a man." Lucille married at age 16 and soon after headed north to the Klondike with her husband. Little else is known about the early life of this remarkable and courageous woman. Biography of Henry Daum Henry Daum was born in a German village in the 1870s. He had five brothers and one sister. Henry trained as a florist in Germany and in the process learned about the operation of greenhouses. He and four of his brothers immigrated to America in the 1890s where Henry found work as a florist in New Jersey and on Long Island.
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In The "North" Russian Presence Trading for furs drove much of the early interest in Alaska by Europeans. Russian traders for the Russian America Company began trading for furs in coastal areas of Alaska in the late 1700s. By the 1820s, they controlled trade throughout the west coast of Alaska. By the mid-1800s, however, Russia was finding it more and more difficult to maintain control of its Alaska interests. In 1867, Russia negotiated the sale of Alaska to the United States. The Reach of the British At the same time that Russia was establishing trade in Alaska, Britain and its Hudson's Bay Company was exploring the Arctic coast of Canada and Alaska and extending trade into the northern Yukon. The remote upper reaches of the Yukon River in southwest Yukon, eventual site of the Klondike Gold Rush, remained relatively untouched. In 1848, however, Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Selkirk on the upper Yukon. The fort was burned by protective Chilkat traders several years later. From the South Gold prospectors had been working their way steadily north since the California Gold Rush of 1849. Gold was discovered inland from Wrangell, Alaska (then Fort Stikine) in 1861 and 1872. The discovery of gold in the Alaskan panhandle in 1880 led to the birth of Juneau. Gold strikes in the middle reaches of the Klondike River at Forty-Mile River in 1886 and Birch Creek in 1893 drew prospectors further and further into the interior. Rumors of gold drew a trickle of prospectors into the upper reaches of the Yukon. In 1897, when the Klondike Gold Rush began, little was known about this remote region of Alaska and the Yukon. The area had been home for thousands of years to complex societies of Native people. Small numbers of outside prospectors, traders, and explorers had begun to enter the area, but little information had reached the outside world.
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In The Yukon Since Time Immemorial Prior to European contact in the 18th century, Coastal Tlingits lived throughout southeastern Alaska. Bands of Inland Tlingit, Tagish, and Tutchone inhabited the territory northeast of the Coastal Mountains in what is now the Canadian Yukon. The Chilkat and Chilkoot Tlingits, living in the areas around what would become Skagway and Dyea, traded with the interior tribes. They traveled across the Coastal Mountains on tightly controlled traditional trails. They traded edible seaweed, cedar baskets, shell ornaments, and fish oil with the inland tribes. In exchange they received furs, skins, meats and a yellow lichen used to dye blankets. After European contact, they also carried a wide variety of European trade items. Dark Clouds on the Horizon Russia's "sale" of Alaska to the United States in 1867 bewildered and insulted the Tlingits. From their perspective, Russia sold a territory it did not legally own without consulting the rightful Native owners. The sale began an era of increased colonization by the United States and destructive impacts on many Native cultures. In 1879, U.S. Navy Captain L. A. Beardslee negotiated with the Chilkat and Chilkoot for safe passage over Chilkoot Pass for a number of white explorers and prospectors. By 1887, about 200 miners had traveled the pass into the upper Yukon. Changed Forever In August 1896, an event occurred that was to change the region and its Native inhabitants forever. On Bonanza Creek, a small branch of the remote Klondike River, three prospectors discovered what would prove to be the largest concentration of gold ever found. News spread quickly to the loose network of white prospectors moving throughout the Yukon. Winter soon set in closing all routes to the Klondike. News of the strike would not reach the rest of the world until the following summer.
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Adventure or Fools' Mission? The lure of gold was powerful when the SS Portland arrived in Seattle on July 17, 1897 with its cargo of gold from the Klondike. Thousands joined the rush, leaving home and loved ones behind. Many took great risks, quitting paying jobs, hoping to improve their situation in life. All jumped headlong into an uncertain future. Some sought riches by selling goods and services to the stampeders. There were plenty of prospects and opportunities, schemes and dreams, to go around.
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Extra! Extra! Newspapers across the country quickly picked up the story of the Klondike gold discoveries. The excitement that began in Seattle soon spread across the country - and around the world. Laden with Gold The SS Excelsior's arrival in San Francisco on July 14, 1897 alerted Seattle reporters to imminent arrival of the SS Portland to its own port. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer chartered a tug to meet the gold-laden vessel as it sailed into Puget Sound on its voyage from Alaska. Beriah Brown, a Post-Intelligencer reporter, obtained information and raced back to town ahead of the slower-moving ship. "GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!" shouted the July 17 headline. In Seattle, the impact of the Klondike headlines was immediate. Excitement swept the town. Just one day after the vessel arrived, the steamer Al-Ki departed for the Yukon, filled with hopeful stampeders and 350 tons of supplies. The Excitement Spreads News of the Klondike discovery quickly spread. Klondike headlines and stories promising instant wealth in the far north appeared at newsstands across the country. The New York Times described the strike as "monumentally significant." Spelled "Klondike," "Klondyke," and "Clondyke," confusion about the word added to the mystery. Whatever the spelling, the term had meaning for readers. It conveyed the promise of immense wealth and adventure. It offered escape from the drudgery of years of economic depression. Gold Fever The lure of Klondike gold was so great that Puget Sound cities had trouble keeping employees. Many members of Tacoma's fire department resigned to join the stampede. The Seattle District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had difficulty retaining workers to complete fortification projects in the Puget Sound region. Even W. D. Wood, mayor of Seattle, succumbed to gold fever. "Seattle is Klondike Crazy," one Seattle Chronicle headline explained: "Men of All Professions Preparing for the Gold Fields."
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Deciding to Go John Nordstrom's Story In August of 1897, John Nordstrom owned a small plot of land near Arlington, Washington and worked in a logging camp. Years later he wrote about his decision to join the gold rush: In August of that summer, I went into Arlington one Saturday night ... planning to come back the following morning. Sunday morning I got up and bought a morning Seattle Post Intelligencer paper to read during breakfast. Splashed across the page was the news that "GOLD" had been found in the Klondike ... A friend and I were sitting and discussing this ... Finally I slammed the paper down on the table and said, "I'm going to Alaska; will you go with me?" He thought a minute and said "No." Then I returned to camp, got my things ... and by four o'clock that afternoon I was on the train bound for Seattle and a new adventure.
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Coffee pot and cup that belonged to the supplies of a stampeder.
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