Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

RAILWAY OF THE FAR NORTH. The White Pass and Yukon Railway. The building of this railway is one of the most interesting chap- ters in the history of the now famous Yukon goldfields. The following description is from the pen of one who has been promi= nently associated with the railway since its inception. TOWARDS the close of the summer of 1896 some miners prospecting along the Yukon River discovered the go]den riches of the Klondike. The credit for this discovery has been claimed by two differ- ent parties, but the fact is that the discovery seems to have been substantially simultaneous on two different creeks flowing into the Klondike River. The first discoverers kept their dis- coveries to themselves as far as possible ; but rumour soon ex- tended up and down the Yukon River, and other miners arrived rapidly from the various mining camps scattered for thou- sands of miles along its banks, so that when the spring of 1897 came, and mining opera- tions were once more possible, there was already a considerable population prospecting and mining in the Klondike. As the summer of Discovery of Gold on the Yukon River. 1897 advanced, some of these men began sending out their gold dust, which they had till then kept stored in flour-sacks and empty meat and vegetable tins on the floors of their cabins or tents. The wealth of the ground which had been opened up so far exceeded all their previous mining experiences, that these men honestly believed that if they held their gold dust until the following year the world would be so flooded with it that, in their own words, “ there would be no price for it.” Consequently, just as a farmer hurries his wheat to market when he anticipates a decline in price, these men were anxious to get their gold dust to San Francisco or Seattle before gold lost its value in the markets of the world by reason of the anticipated flood from the Klondike. The first Klondike gold, amount- ing to $1,000,000 (£200,000), arrived in Seattle in August 1897, and the accounts of the won-