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Album: Seattle, Washington 2007
Image: 427 / 545
Date: 2007-09-03 10:12:16
Tags: Seattle

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.