(159 pages)Gift via Carol and Jim.
Book focuses on a window of a year or two where it was believed (entirely erroneously) that fortunes could be made mining gold in Kotzebue Sound (the name is familiar to us as our flight to Nome way back when had a short stop there - just north of the Arctic Circle).
I liked it - fascinating or almost exotic in that the story is remote in both time and geography - yet not so remote in either category - so it's possible if not easy to relate to folks getting caught up in a news cycle and wanting to have a go at gold mining.
Kotzebue as an alternative to the Klondike - where plenty of gold had been found, but there were some Canadian border issues for US citizens in particular. 49ers euphoria from California not so distant; plenty of appetite for this kind of thing, so a few well-placed stories go a long way.
Bernard Cogan ran ships up there and was a primary promoter - pretty clearly a crook. Makes money transporting suckers and their goods; then he goes whaling farther north to make some more money (perhaps the suckers should have noted that Cogan himself wasn't doing any mining).
Near-complete absence of gold - at best, enough for a hard-working miner to match wages that could have been earned in a much easier job back home - even suckers could figure this out pretty early and most don't bother with much digging; some return to the lower 48 within weeks or months, others are stuck through the winter. Interesting stories as they celebrate Christmas, fight scurvy and boredom, etc.
What wasn't funny: a significant number of deaths and illnesses, this is dangerous work and travel in a rough country, with most stampeders understandably un- or under-prepared.
Missionaries already in place in Alaska; the gold rush to this area accelerates the pace of changes for the locals - difficult in so many ways.
Author places significant reliance on diaries of an interesting fellow (named Grinnell) - he was primarily interested in birds, signed onto the gold-mining role as an excuse to do field work up north (but nonetheless seems to have done his tasks with the gold miners, such as they were).
Photos are a pleasure throughout the book - b/w, evocative.
After an ill-fated year - real gold strikes at Nome, so some move on to there - interesting background on Nome area at this time. A few continue to work the Kotzebue area notwithstanding no meaningful successes there.
Recommended.
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