KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH Ep. 3 | “Race to Nome”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Legends of the Old West — KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH Ep. 3 | “Race to Nome”

Air Date: March 18, 2026
Host: Chris Wimmer (Black Barrel Media)
Episode Description: This episode delves into the dramatic final phase of the Klondike Gold Rush, the rise and fall of boomtowns like Skagway and Nome, the infamous con man Soapy Smith's reign in Skagway, the relentless pursuit of riches by individuals like Jack London and the trio known as the “Three Swedes,” and the presence of legendary lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Tex Rickard as fortunes—and towns—shifted north to Nome.

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Episode Overview

Theme:
The “Race to Nome” explores the feverish final years of the Klondike and Alaska Gold Rushes, showcasing the treacherous journeys, opportunism, wild lawlessness, and eventual transformation of raw gold fields into makeshift towns. Central stories include Jack London's harrowing Yukon winter, Soapy Smith’s criminal empire in Skagway, the rise of Nome and the legal-mob chaos surrounding major gold strikes, and the presence of iconic figures like Wyatt Earp. The episode traces how each new gold discovery triggered an exodus, fortunes made and lost, and left a mythic legacy in the American West.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jack London and the Harsh Realities of the Klondike (01:14–03:18)

• Jack London’s Ordeal: After completing the grueling journey to Dawson City in 1898, London, like many, found himself physically broken and too late to strike it rich.
  • Notable quote:
    • “He had spent four months fighting through 600 miles of a journey...and he had completed his goal. He made it to Dawson City, and he spent no time looking for gold.” —Host (03:07)
• Statistics of Disappointment:
  • Out of ~100,000 stampeders, only about 4,000 found any gold, and just a few hundred struck it rich (03:18).
  • After the deadly Palm Sunday avalanche, enthusiasm waned and most never made it to the Klondike.

2. The Shift from Dyea to Skagway and Soapy Smith’s Conquest (04:26–18:43)

• Boom and Bust Towns: As stampeders switched from the Chilkoot Trail (Dyea) to the White Pass Trail (Skagway) due to the avalanche, Dyea faded and Skagway exploded (04:26–05:07).
• Rise of Soapy Smith:
  • Soapy arrives in Skagway in 1897, setting up new swindles and embedding himself in the town’s corrupt structure (06:06–11:08).
  • “He publicly championed law and order while privately orchestrating chaos... led patriotic parades, supported charities, and befriended influential citizens. At the same time, he corrupted a US Marshal and bribed the lawmen...” —Host (09:53)
• Showdown with Citizens:
  • Growing frustration leads to the formation of Committee 101, a vigilante group led by hotel owner Thomas Witten and engineer Frank Reed (15:05–16:12).
  • The standoff culminates with Soapy Smith’s death in a gunfight with Frank Reed on July 8, 1898.
    • Memorable exchange:
      • “Frank was still alive. He muttered, ‘He may have got me boys, but I got him first.’” —Host (18:40)
  • Skagway begins to calm, but immediately faces a second boom as gold hunters pour through (19:02–19:44).

3. The Nome Gold Strike and Its Chaos (19:48–36:10)

• Discovery at Anvil Creek:

  • The “Three Swedes” (Japhet Lindeberg, Eric Lindblom, John Brenteson) strike gold at Anvil Creek in September 1898 and quickly stake dozens of claims (21:05–22:47).
  • The population of Nome explodes from 500 to over 20,000 in a year (23:13–24:03).

• Lawlessness and Mob Justice:

  • In contrast to Canadian law, Alaska is a wild free-for-all—claims are poorly defined, easily disputed, and justice is arbitrary (22:50–24:47).
  • When rumors spread that the Three Swedes’ claims are up for grabs due to citizenship disputes, an angry mob of 600 stampeders confronts them in Tex Rickard’s Northern Saloon (33:41–34:11).
    • “The three Swedes stood their ground in the saloon. They defended their gold, their citizenship, and their honor. But they were hopelessly outnumbered.” —Host (34:41)
  • The crisis is broken up by Lt. Oliver Spaulding and six soldiers, who disperse the mob at rifle-point (34:50–35:19).
  • Miraculous Turn: Days later, gold is found on Nome’s beaches—easy, surface deposits, setting off yet another rush (35:34–36:03).

• Final Legal Battles:

  • Politician Alexander Mackenzie and Judge Arthur Noyes corruptly force the Swedes off their claims, but are ultimately overruled after a circuit judge finds them guilty of abuse of power (36:22–37:06).
    • “McKenzie was sentenced to a year in jail... Judge Noyes was fined $1,000... President Theodore Roosevelt removed him from office.” —Narrator (36:43–37:06)

4. Wyatt Earp and Tex Rickard: Lawmen as Businessmen (27:53–37:44)

• Earp’s Klondike Adventure:
  • Wyatt and Josephine Earp arrive in Alaska, team up with Tex Rickard, and become central figures in Nome’s bustling saloon scene (29:02–31:35).
  • “Josephine, who was basically the marketing director for the business, shrewdly downplayed the brothel and promoted the Dexter around town as a better class of saloon.” —Host (31:09)
• When the Gold Runs Out:
  • Earp and Rickard capitalize and move on as Nome’s gold rush wanes, making fortunes and leaving for California and Nevada (37:13–37:44).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The landscape is magnificent, vast, but it’s absolutely indifferent to you and whether you survive is of absolutely no importance.”—Charlotte Gray, as quoted by Chris Wimmer (02:25)
• “The best way to make money in a gold rush was to mine the miners.” —Host (05:36)
• “Soapy Smith did the opposite. He raised his public presence and essentially bet that he was too big to bring down.” —Host (12:27)
• “All a person needed was a shovel and a bucket. As the formerly furious, now jubilant miners raced for the shoreline...” —Narrator (35:45)
• “The gold rushes in the Yukon and Alaska had burned bright, but also burned short.” —Host (37:44)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [01:14–03:18] Jack London’s journey and the realities of the Klondike
• [04:26–05:07] Shift from Dyea/Chilkoot Trail to booming Skagway
• [06:06–11:08] Soapy Smith’s scams and rise to power in Skagway
• [15:05–16:12] Skagway’s citizens organize against Soapy Smith
• [17:23–18:43] The gunfight between Soapy Smith and Frank Reed
• [19:48–24:03] Nome's explosive population surge and lawlessness
• [33:41–35:19] The 600-man saloon showdown and military intervention
• [35:34–36:03] The surprise discovery of gold on Nome’s beaches
• [36:22–37:06] Political corruption and judicial reckoning in Nome
• [37:44–38:46] The rapid decline of the gold rush towns

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Episode Takeaways

• The Gold Rush Cycle: Each new gold discovery triggered a boom, followed by chaos, crime, and mushrooming populations—only to swiftly decline as the gold dried up.
• Legendary Characters: Figures like Jack London, Soapy Smith, Wyatt Earp, and Tex Rickard embody both the desperation and showmanship of the era, as they fought, schemed, and hustled across the wild frontier.
• Law and Lawlessness: With little to no formal authority, towns like Skagway and Nome cycled through vigilantism, corruption, and—occasionally—order, often enforced not by the law, but by those with the most nerve and firepower.
• Enduring Legacy: The gold rushes may have burned out quickly, but their stories, scandals, and epic showdowns shaped the mythos of the American West.

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For those interested in the tumultuous twilight of America’s gold rush era and its cast of larger-than-life characters, this episode vividly captures the drama, danger, and drive for fortune—right up to the last gold pan in Nome.

Transcript

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[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The summer of 1898 was the season of transition for the Klondike Gold Rush. The experience of soon to be famous author Jack London was emblematic of the average stampeder who raced to the middle of nowhere in Yukon Territory. In the summer of 1897, Jack had taken a steamship 1500 miles north from San Francisco, California to Juneau, Alaska. Then he took a canoe another 100 miles north to the booming town of Dyea, Alaska. Then he hauled hundreds of pounds of supplies over the 33 mile Chilkoot Trail for Dye to Lake Lindemann in Canada, which included the incredible climb up to Chilkoot Pass in the Coast Mountains on the border between Alaska and Canada. Then he and his four companions built a boat and traveled 500 miles up the Yukon river toward their destination of Dawson City before winter stopped their Progress

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

in early October 1897. By the following spring, April of 1898, Jack was nearly dead from scurvy. Eight months of relentless bone chilling winter

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

had nearly done what hundreds of miles of traveling could not.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Famous Canadian author Charlotte Gray wrote a book about the Gold Rush in which she said, the landscape is magnificent, vast, but it's absolutely indifferent to you and whether you survive is of absolutely no importance. That was an accurate depiction of the

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

unforgiving reality of the trip to the Klondike. But Jack London survived.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

By May of 1898 the Yukon river had thawed to the point where he could finish the trek to Dawson City. But by the second week of June, his health was still so bad that his chance to find Gold was gone. He had spent four months fighting through 600 miles of a journey from Dyea, Alaska, to Dawson City.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

And he had endured eight months of a Yukon winter in a primitive log cabin. And he had completed his goal. He made it to Dawson City, and he spent no time looking for gold.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

After all that, he went home empty handed. And his story ended the same way as most of the others. Roughly 100,000 people attempted the journey over the Chilkoot Trail, or the White Pass Trail from Alaska to the Klondike gold strike near Dawson city. Of the 100,000, an estimated 30,000 completed the first leg of the trip by making it over the coast mountains from Alaska to Canada. Of the 30,000, an estimated 4,000 people found gold in some quantity. And only a few hundred found enough gold to make the trip worth it. When the Palm Sunday avalanche killed between 60 and 70 people and effectively wiped out the Chilkoot Trail in April 1898, lots of stampeders abandoned the trip. Even if they didn't know how rare it was to find gold in the Klondike. The price was too high and the attempt wasn't worth it. But news of the discovery of gold traveled fast, and the news of a decline or a bust traveled much more slowly.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Those who were still determined to find

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

their fortune in the Klondike shifted from the Chilkoot Trail over the Coast Mountains to the White Pass Trail. In the process, the boom town of Dyea slowly died. At its peak, 40,000 stampeders poured through Dye's hastily built hotels, brothels and supply houses. Saloons outnumbered churches 39 to 1. Within two years of the avalanche, dye was virtually empty. Within five, it was all but a ghost town. But as Dye faded, Skagway brightened. The town of Skagway, just a couple miles east of Dyea, was the starting point for the White Pass Trail.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Its population exploded from the summer of 1897 to the summer of 1898. In the spring of 1898, at the same time Jack London finally reached Dawson City, enterprising businessmen began construction of a railroad from Skagway through the Coast Mountains to Lake Bennett in Canada. Eventually, stampeders would be able to ride the rail instead of tackling the 45 mile trail on foot. But as other enterprising businessmen knew, the best way to make money in a gold rush was to mine the miners. As Skagway boomed, it also became the battleground for a small war between legitimate operators and hustlers. And the hustlers were led by one of the most notorious characters of the Old West Soapy Smith.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling stories of the Klondike Gold Rush, where famous author Jack London and 100,000 other people raced through Alaska to the Yukon in search of riches. This is episode three, Race to Nome. With the brief exception of ventures in other cities, Jefferson Smith ruled Denver's criminal underworld from 1879 to 1893. The man who would become the West's most notorious con artist during that time started with a scheme so simple it bordered on genius. Standing on a street corner, Smith sold bars of soap which he had purchased for 10 cents each.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

He wrapped them in paper and then

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

offered them for sale at the outrageous price of $5 per bar. But the hook was that he told his prospective customers that a random bar of Soap could contain $10 in the wrapper or $20 or even $50. It was a game of chance, like a lottery, and to encourage passersby to participate, he made sure that a buyer

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

won one of the prizes. The winner celebrated loudly and joyously, which enticed other people to step up to the table and buy a bar. And of course, it was all an act. The people who looked like winners were part of Smith's gang, and none of the bars of soap that were sold to the public contained prizes. The swindle worked beautifully for a while anyway, and it earned Jefferson Smith the nickname Soapy. Soapy Smith expanded his criminal empire over the years to include exotic and elaborate hustles. His reputation as a prolific con man and his bank account grew rapidly. To buy goodwill and to keep himself out of jail, he donated to charities and politicians. But a con man's time in one place was always limited. It was inevitable that he would eventually burn all his bridges and need to leave.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

The panic of 1893 made people more watchful over their money, and the citizens of Denver were ready to run him out of town. So he drifted around the west until he heard the same news that Jack London heard in the summer of 1897. There was gold in the Yukon and there were a pair of boom towns in Alaska which which were ripe for the picking. Dyea and Skagway were the twin cities of the Klondike Gold rush in Alaska. They were only a few miles from each other and each was the starting

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

place of a trail over the coast

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

mountains to the Yukon. The Chilkoot Trail started at Dyea, and

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

the White Pass Trail started at Skagway.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

The Chilkoot Trail was shorter, so it held a slight edge as the preferred route for stampeders. But before the spring of 1898, it was also harder than the White Pass Trail. But until the infamous Palm Sunday avalanche on the Golden Stairs portion of the chilkoot Trail in April 1898, stampeders mostly chose the hard route over the long route.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

After the deadly avalanche, stampeders mostly abandoned the Chilkoot Trail, and businesses quickly abandoned Dyea. The switch from the Chilkoot Trail to

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the White Pass Trail made Skagway's already booming population explode. For those who had already established themselves in Skagway, they were in the perfect position to capitalize on the increased action. One of those who benefited enormously was Soapy Smith. Soapy arrived in August 1897 at about

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

the same time that Jack London was

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

starting his trek up the Chilkoot Trail from Dyea. Soapy's most loyal gang members traveled with him, and they reinvented their empire with a telegraph scam. Soapy promised homesick stampeders that he would send messages to their worried families back home for a fee. But the stampeders, many of whom were heading off into the wilderness, didn't know that there were no telegraph lines in Skagway at that time. It was a low risk, low effort, easy money. Swindle. Next, Soapy charmed his way into Skagway's power structure. He publicly championed law and order while privately orchestrating chaos. He led patriotic parades, supported charities, and befriended influential citizens. At the same time, he corrupted a US Marshal and bribed the lawmen to protect him from federal interference. Smith partnered with a saloon owner to open Jeff Smith's parlor.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The front bar served drinks, while the back room hosted rigged card games where the house always won.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

As in every city where the conman

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

operated, it didn't take long for whispers

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

about his schemes to reach dangerous levels. Smith countered with his usual tactics. Bribed the lawmen to do nothing and bribed the newspapers to write slanted stories or no stories at all. Over the course of a year, from the summer of 1897 to the summer of 1898, while Jack London was battling his way to Dawson City, Skagway split into two camps. Those who saw Sophie Smith as a charismatic community leader and those who recognized him as a thief and a liar. In May 1898, the reckoning began. A prostitute named Ellen Wilson was murdered

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

in the tiny shack that was her home and workplace. Madam Mattie Sickles, who was a rival

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

of Soapy Smith's in Denver and who had followed the gold rush to Skagway publicly accused Smith of the killing. Simultaneously, miners who had returned from Dawson

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

City and had been swindled out of

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

their gold loudly voiced their opposition to Jeff Smith and his parlor of rich rigged games. By July 1898, victims were organizing public protests and calling Smith's games what they really were robberies. Smith maintained his victims had lost fair and square, but too many people knew the truth. The situation was growing hot, and at that point many criminals would have decided to cut their losses and vanish into the night. Sobey Smith did the opposite. He raised his public presence and essentially bet that he was too big to bring down. In response, leading citizens of Skagway turned to a common strategy in the Old west the Vigilance Committee Quince has everyday

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[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Word spread through the Yukon that Skagway was being run by con men, but the town experienced the same dynamics as nearly all boom towns in the American West. Lawlessness reigned early, but it started to calm as families put down roots. Churches and schools rose from muddy lots, and legitimate businesses lined the streets. For many stampeders, Skagway wasn't a stopover anymore. It was home. The town couldn't afford to let Soapy Smith's reputation or his actions kill its future. In the spring of 1898, a citizens group called Committee 101 was born. Thomas Witten, owner of the prestigious Grand North Hotel, was the chairman. He handpicked a crew of guards led by city engineer Frank Reed, a man who had helped build Skagway from nothing and wasn't about to watch it fall to criminals.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

By the summer of 1898, Committee 101 had gained serious momentum. It claimed more than 100 members, all of whom were united against Soapy Smith. Tension was building, but there had not

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

been a confrontation until the brazen robbery of John Stewart, a miner who had just arrived from Dawson City with pockets full of gold. After Smith's gang robbed The Miner, Committee 101 posted a public warning on the streets that read like a declaration of war. All con men, bunko and sure thing men and all other objectionable characters are notified to leave Skagway and the White Pass Road immediately. Failure to comply with this warning will

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

be followed by prompt action.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Soapy Smith fired back with his own warning in which he claimed that he

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

ran the real law and order party. And he boasted 317 members in his

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

committee as opposed to the roughly 100 in Committee 101. Soapy declared that no blackmailers or vigilantes would be tolerated. He dubbed his Crew Committee 303 in mockery of Committee 101. But his numbers were a bluff. He didn't have 317 supporters, though it

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

didn't stop him from challenging Frank Reid

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

and the committee that did have the numbers.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

On the evening of July 8, members of Committee 101 crowded into a warehouse on Juneau Wharf, which stretched out into

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the waters of the Chilkoot Inlet. Frank Reed and four others stood guard outside while the committee members discussed ways to get rid of Soapy Smith once and for all. Soapy guzzled whiskey and brooded on his situation. He knew a confrontation was coming and after enough liquid courage, he decided to act first.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

At 9pm he marched down to the wharf with a rifle slung over his shoulder. In the hazy darkness of an early summer night, Soapy approached the warehouse. He shot, shouted at the guards to let him through.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

According to the legend, he barged past three of the guards and came face to face with his arch enemy, Frank Reed. Reed and Soapy argued. Soapy reportedly lifted his rifle. They grappled for control of the weapon and Frank pulled his pistol. A brief gunfight erupted on the pier. Soapy took a bullet, stumbled backward and crashed to the ground. As he did, he fired a shot at Reed. The bullet tore into Frank reed's gut. Committee 101 members rushed to Frank's side. They found Soapy Smith dead on the pier.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

But Frank was still alive. He muttered, he may have got me

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

boys, but I got him first.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Frank Reed held on for 12 painful days before he died on July 20. As the town grieved the loss of one of its leading citizens, it also mutely celebrated the downfall of its most notorious outlaw. The return of some stability happened none too soon for Skagway.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

It's not like it turned into the perfect picture of law and order all of a sudden. But there was definitely improvement. And the town needed it that summer because it was experiencing its second population boom. The deadly Palm Sunday avalanche three months earlier had driven nearly all traffic away from Dyea. Nearly everyone who still wanted to go to the Klondike was now moving through Skagway. The first few miles of the new

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

railroad along White Pass Trail had just opened.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Skagway needed to continue to upgrade itself in order to be the vital artery

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

for the gold rush.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

But as every miner knew, fortunes changed fast. In mid September 1898, just two months after Frank Reed's death, gold was discovered

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

along Anvil Creek near Nome, Alaska.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Nome was 860 miles north of Skagway,

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

but it was right on the water.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Stampeders could bypass Skagway and sail directly to Nome. The exodus was immediate and devastating.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

In the deepest part of the winter of 1898, while Jack London was suffering

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the effects of scurvy in a cabin in the Yukon, the and Soapy Smith was building a new criminal empire in Skagway. A 24 year old Norwegian man named

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Japhet Lindberg was learning that a plan

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

to use Siberian reindeer to haul supplies to the miners in the Yukon was

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

not going to work.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

It was called the Klondike Reindeer Project, and it had a certain amount of logic based on the climate and the terrain. But there were a host of unexpected

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

problems and the project shut down. Lindbergh was one of many Norwegians who

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

had signed contracts with the American government to travel to Alaska as reindeer herders. The man who had dreamed up the idea and had organized the project was based in an area north of Nome, Alaska. When the project fizzled out, Lindbergh found

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

his way to a mining camp about

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

60 miles from Nome.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

There he met Eric Lindblom and John

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Brenteson, both of whom were from Sweden.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Lindbloom was a tailor by trade, was

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the oldest of the three and had

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

the least amount of mining experience.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

But he was fascinated by the American west and had studied mining in school. He moved his young family to the US in 1886 and became an American citizen in the spring of 1898. He couldn't resist news of the gold rush any longer. His family stayed in San Francisco, where, while he headed north in search of riches, John Brenteson was the muscle and the experience of the trio. He grew up poor in Sweden and moved to Michigan at age 16 to work in the copper and iron mines.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

By the time he headed for Alaska,

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

he was a hardened miner and a naturalized American citizen.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

With their shared Scandinavian roots, they became

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

known, inaccurately as the Three Swedes. After careful deliberation, they set their sights on the Seward Peninsula at the mouth of the Snake River. In the spring of 1898, the three Swedes were quietly working the streams north of a village called Anvil City, which later became Nome. In September 1898, they struck it rich on Anvil Creek. For upwards of 10 days, they kept their discovery a secret. They quietly staked as many claims in the area as they could before the news inevitably got out. Alaska in 1898 was the wild west in its purest form. It lacked the law and order that defined the Canadian gold fields. In Canada, the government made the rules

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

and the Northwest Mounted Police enforced them.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

A man could only stake one claim. He had to register it, pay a fee and share a percentage of his findings with the government. Alaska was a free for all. Claim boundaries were vague and the number of claims that a single person could stake was even more vague. Miners registered their claims with local community officials, not a legal government entity. Rules changed from one district to the next. Claim jumping was rampant. Miners disputed claims for any reason they felt justified. They were ready to mine on top of each other or simply kick a man out. When news broke of the Anvil Creek strike. It triggered an eruption. Before the stampede, Anvil City was home to about 500 native villagers. One month after gold was discovered, it was renamed the Cape Nome Mining District. In less than four months, Nome's population rose to more than 10,000 people. The following year, it rose as high as 20,000. In less than 12 months, a village of 500 people ballooned to a city of 20,000. It changed its name to Nome, and it became Alaska's largest city overnight.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The federal government wasn't ready. The military wasn't ready.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Local committees weren't ready. Discouraged Americans who had found nothing in the Yukon flooded into Nome, only to discover that three Scandinavian men had already

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

locked up 30 to 40 of the best claims. The new miners were outraged. There was only one law with any semblance of clarity in Alaska.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Only American citizens or those in the process of becoming citizens could stake a claim.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Two Swedish men, Lindblom and Bryntsson, were American citizens by that point and had been for some time.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Japhet Lindeberg, the Norwegian, was in the process of gaining American citizenship.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Their claims should have been solid, but

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

with so much gold on the line, angry, broke and exhausted stampeders were determined to find a loophole.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

And it couldn't be a classic Old west story of a small group of underdogs battling a mob if it didn't feature a showdown in a saloon. As it happened, in this case, the saloon was owned by a new friend

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

of Wyatt Earp, who always seemed to find himself in the middle of a feud.

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[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

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[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

In 1896, just before news of gold in the Klondike broke, Wyatt Earp and

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

his wife Josephine were scraping by in San Diego during the economic depression.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

They dabbled in saloons and real estate, and they were trying to set up a new mining venture in Yuma, Arizona when they heard about the Klondike Gold rush.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

In the summer of 1897, they started their trek north. They made it as far as Juneau,

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Alaska before returning to San Francisco the following year.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

In 1898, they left San Francisco and headed north again. They decided to take the water route,

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

which was sometimes called the rich man's route. They traveled around the coast of Alaska to the Port of St. Michael.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

From there they took a boat up

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

the Yukon river to try to reach Dawson City. In doing so, they were moving along the same route in the opposite direction as Jack London while he was heading home to San Francisco.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Like Jack the previous year they were

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

stopped on the river by winter.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

They spent a long, hard Alaskan winter

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

in a tiny outpost called Rampart, about 100 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

In Rampart, Wyatt Earp forged a friendship that defined his time in the north.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

He met George Lewis Rickard, a former marshal from Henrietta, Texas. By the time the weather warmed in

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the spring of 1899, there was no reason to continue the long trip to reach the isolated and overcrowded hub of Dawson City. The new hotspot for gold was in an Alaskan boom town called Nome.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The three new friends traveled back down

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the Yukon river to St. Michael which sits on the banks of a half

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

moon shaped body of water called Norton Sound.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Nome is a relatively short trip across

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

the sound from St. Michael. When the travelers reached St. Michael, they split up. Tex Rickard hurried across the Sound to Nome and opened the Northern Saloon. Wyatt and Josephine stayed in St. Michael and opened a shop that sold tobacco and liquor. Business was good at the Earps store, but they kept receiving letters from Tex Rickard which playfully taunted them by calling their prophets Ch chicken feed compared to the fortune they could make in Nome. The Earps gave in and moved across the Sound to Nome. Nome was a five mile strip of mud along the Alaska coast. The main road was a quagmire two feet deep that was lined with flapping tents and hastily constructed wooden buildings. When rain didn't assault the area, dust did. The town was high in sickness and low in sanitation and almost totally devoid of law. In other words, it was a typical boom town in the West.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

In the middle of it all, Tex Rickards saloon became a popular joint when Wyatt and Josephine arrived.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Wyatt didn't partner with his fellow lawmen in the venture.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Wyatt partnered with a local businessman named Charlie Hoxie to start a saloon called the Dexter. It was a formidable two story building with a discreet brothel upstairs.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Josephine, who was basically the marketing director

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

for the business, shrewdly downplayed the brothel

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

and promoted the Dexter around town as a better class of saloon.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

A place for business deals and political campaigns. Coupled with the legend of Wyatt Earp. Her strategy worked. The Dexter's business boomed. And luckily for the two former lawmen, the competition did not hurt their friendship. As the summer of 1899 progressed, Wyatt and Tex became two of the most powerful and trusted men in Nome.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

But halfway through the summer, the simmering

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

tension between the new miners and the three Swedes started to boil. In July of 1899, a new wave of angry, desperate stampeders washed into Nome only to learn what the previous waves had learned. The three Swedes had already staked every good claim near Anvil Creek.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Feeling cheated and furious, the new miners turned to the two men who ran

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the town's social centers, Tex and Wyatt. Neither man wanted any part of the feud, but it nearly came to a head in Tex Rickard's Northern saloon. After staking most of the claims near

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Anvil Creek, about four miles north of Nome, the three Swedes formed the Pioneer Mining Company.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Each man held an equal share. Japhet Lindeberg, despite being the only one who was not yet a full American citizen, was named company president.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

He had more business savvy than his

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

partners and they trusted his leadership. Eric Lindblom and John Brentison were naturalized citizens, and they believed that majority ownership by two citizens and Lindbergh's clear intention

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

to naturalize made their claims ironclad.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Desperate stampeders were determined to test that belief.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

They argued that the US commissioner who issued Lindenberg's citizenship papers in St Michael

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

had no authority to do so. If Lindbergh's papers were invalid, his legal right to stake a claim vanished. If he couldn't stake a claim, then his company couldn't stake a claim. If his company didn't legally own any of the claims and then all that territory was up for grabs. The stampeders conveniently ignored the fact that Lindbergh's partners were citizens and the stampeders

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

moved to take the claims of the Pioneer Mining Company. By mid July 1899, the miners against the three Swedes numbered in the hundreds. The stampeders formed an attack plan and phase one of the plan happened at Tex Rickards northern saloon.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Foreign

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

More than 600 livid stampeders crammed into the space. They made two arguments at once. They said the Swedes were not citizens, but even if they were, they had

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

no right to stake so many claims, especially in one area.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The citizenship argument had a couple facets

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

to it since Japhet Lindeberg's process was not yet complete. But the argument about the number of claims was murky at best.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

None of that mattered to an angry mob.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

600 stampeders shoved their way into the northern saloon to confront the three Scandinavian miners. the same time, another group of stampeders waited four miles north at Anvil Creek. If the mob succeeded in taking the claims from the three Swedes, the group

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

in town would light a giant bonfire.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

That would be the signal for the men at the creek to charge onto the Swedes claims and take the land for themselves.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The three Swedes stood Their ground in the saloon.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

They defended their gold, their citizenship and their honor.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

But they were hopelessly outnumbered.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Just as the mob reached its breaking point, Lt. Oliver Spaulding and six soldiers from St. Michael burst through the door. They carried rifles with fixed bayonets. Spaulding shouted over the noise of the crowd and declared that claim jumping and intimidation would not be tolerated. And while he was at it, firearms

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

were now forbidden in the mining district of Nome. There wasn't going to be any vigilante aggression or drunken, angry gunfights in town.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

The disgruntled stampeders reluctantly dispersed, but the anger was far from extinguished. Lieutenant Spaulding and his tiny force wouldn't be able to keep the lid on the powder keg for very long.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

And then a miracle happened.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

A few days after the saloon standoff,

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

gold was found scattered across the beaches of Nome. It wasn't buried deep in the frozen earth, and hopeful miners didn't need to

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

haul £2,000 of gear over deadly trails to get to it.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

All a person needed was a shovel and a bucket. As the formerly furious, now jubilant miners raced for the shoreline, the three owners of the Pioneer Mining Company hurried back

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

to Anvil Creek and worked with feverish

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

urgency to capitalize on their claims. In the process, they made millions.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

But not everyone moved on. After the saloon standoff and the discovery of gold on the beach.

[Shopify Advertiser]

Foreign.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

A powerful North Dakota political figure, Alexander

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Mackenzie, and a corrupt federal judge, Arthur

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Noyes, tried to twist the law to take the claims from the three Swedes. The two officials succeeded in forcing the

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

three Swedes off of their claims during a messy legal battle. But the officials ultimately failed in their effort.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

In August of 1900, a circuit court judge ruled that Mackenzie and Noyes had committed a highly illegal abuse of power. McKenzie was sentenced to a year in jail, but was pardoned by President William McKinley. After serving just three months, Judge Noyes was fined $1,000.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

He avoided jail, but President Theodore Roosevelt

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

removed him from office. By that time, 1901, the Nome Gold rush was slowing.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Wyatt and Josephine decided it was time to move on.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

They sold their saloon and headed back to California. By one estimate, they made approximately $85,000 in Alaska, more than $2.5 million today. Tex Rickard held on for two more years before moving to Nevada, where he opened another northern saloon and hired Wyatt's

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

brother Virgil to assist the operation.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

He also became one of the most prominent boxing promoters in American history.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

The gold rushes in the Yukon and Alaska had burned bright, but also burned short.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

The glory days of each lasted for about three years, after which the populations

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

of Dawson City, Skagway and Nome plummeted.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

More than half of the people in Skagway had sprinted to Nome, and when the gold ran out in nomenclature, most of them left Alaska altogether. Of those three towns, Dawson City had

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

one more treasure left to be discovered in the ground.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

In 1978, construction workers tore up an old ice skating rink and found hundreds

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

of film reels which had been shipped

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

to the remote corner of the Yukon

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

for the viewing pleasure of roughly 1,000 people who had remained after the Gold rush. Most of the reels were silent movies, but mixed in with them was what turned out to be the best surviving copy of film of the infamous 1919 World Series.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Preserved for history.

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

Under the ice were some of the

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

few moving images of the notorious Chicago

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

White Sox baseball team known ever after as the Black so.

[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

Thanks for listening to the story of

[Host (Chris Wimmer)]

the Klondike Gold Rush and the Alaska Gold Rush here on Legends of the Old West. Next up, we'll tell more stories of outlaws including Doc Middleton, Clay Allison, Cherokee Bill and more. Stay tuned. That's next time on Legends of the Old West. To binge all the episodes of a new season and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or sign up through the link in the Show Notes or on our website, Black Barrel Media this series was researched and written by Mandy Wimmer. Additional research and writing by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valiere. Thanks again for listening.

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[Narrator (Chris Wimmer)]

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