March 7, 1998
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JW Heacock |
In 1897, Joseph (JW) was 19 years old and filled with a sense of adventure. He had heard about the Klondike Gold Rush in Dawson, Canada, and his dreams must have been filled with visions of instant wealth. He was born in West Branch, IA on July 25, 1877, across the creek from Herbert Hoover. Later he lived with his Quaker family in Port Byron, IA on the bank of the Mississippi west of Chicago. Of course, he had little money -- where did a 19-year-old fellow obtain enough money to cover the costs of a trip to Alaska? Maybe the more difficult task was to persuade his parents to allow him to take such a high-risk venture. It seems to strain our credulity, but he somehow convinced his Quaker mother to lend him money for the trip. Her generosity was sufficient to allow him to buy a gun and some other supplies. He packed a few personal belongings and said goodbye to his family and childhood friend Fanny Knowles. (Steven instructed me to use the word “friend” and not “girlfriend” because she “was not a sleeping companion.”) JW apparently took the transcontinental railroad, which had only been completed 28 years earlier. We can only imagine his amazement at being able to travel across the northwest USA to Seattle in only a few days. He must have considered the modern railroad technology to be wonderful as it sped him along parts of the Oregon Trail where covered wagons had progressed at a rate of about 2-3 miles per hour. He then boarded a ship and traveled up the inside passage to Alaska.
Because JW did not keep a log of his adventures, we are left with more questions than we have answers. We are entirely dependent on the stories that he told his family and friends about the trip. Consequently, we can only speculate about many of the details of the trip. However, he told stories about his trip to his son, Steven Heacock and his grandson Dick Heacock. Consequently, we depend on the excellent memories of Steven and Dick for the known details and my imagination for the speculations. According to both sources, we know that the ship unloaded passengers in Dyea, Alaska near Skagway.
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Ship To Alaska |
“The Milepost” (the travel bible Pat and I used while traveling the Alaska Highway in 1995) reports that the first boatloads of “stampeders” arrived in Skagway and Dyea in July 1897. The town of Skagway owes its existence to the gold rush and rapidly grew to about 20,000 people by October 1897. It contained numerous saloons, gambling houses, “dance” houses, and stores. In February 1898 about 5,000 people landed in the Skagway/Dyea area and created a “hell on earth.”
Dick also remembers about an encounter JW had “with a bunch of gamblers at a ‘Racquet Store’ in Skagway. As I remember our grandfather's story, he walked around Dyea Point from Dyea to Skagway (only 10 minutes or so by car today). He was intrigued by the sign on one of the wooden buildings, which read Racquet (or Racket) Store. Being a pretty good tennis player, he went inside. He said all he could see was a large round table with men sitting around it playing poker. One of the men said: ‘Come on, son, get in the game.’ JW's response was something like ‘I don't have any money; only a cashier's check.’ The man got out of his chair and said something like "Come with me and we'll get it cashed."
Having heard, apparently, about Soapy Smith and his gang, JW took off down the street. Having been a good track man, it wasn't hard for him to leave the eager gambler in the dust!
By the summer of 1899 the gold rush was virtually over and by 1902 Skagway dwindled to 500 people. Today, Dyea reveals little evidence of the chaos that must have surrounded JW upon landing. His grandson, Dick has “walked all over what used to be a rather busy gold-rush town and all that remains are some old boards with square nails from the bunkhouse and a garbage dump with rusted tin cans and the pilings from what I assume was the dock built after 1898.” Many of the passengers had at least 2000 pounds of gear, which was dumped unceremoniously onto the beach. It was up to the owner to move it up higher onto the beach out of the reach of high tide. Mixed among the gold-seekers were assorted unsavory characters such as Soapy Smith, who would steal anything that was unattached or not watched carefully. Some of the adventurers probably arrived without enough gear to survive in the goldfields and were desperate to obtain whatever they needed. So it was important to keep an eye on your gear while hauling it up the beach.
Once the gear was safe from high tides, it was necessary to find a way to haul it all to the Klondike gold fields in Dawson City, Northwest Territories of Canada. Because many of the early prospectors entered Canada without enough supplies, they were ill-prepared for the rigors of a Canadian winter. Or, they did not carry enough food to sustain them during their travels or their search for gold. Consequently, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were forced to deal with all of the problems caused by some careless folks. To head off such problems, the Mounted Police set up a checkpoint on the Alaska-Canadian border and insisted that each person entering Canada had enough food, clothing, and equipment to last for a full year. It amounted to about 2000 pounds of dried beans, rice, flour, rifles, axes, blankets, winter-clothing etc. There were exact specifications about the minimum amount of each of these items that were required.
Most of these prospectors left Dyea and carried their supplies up the Chilkoot trail. It was a steep climb of 3,739 feet up to Chilkoot Pass over sometimes treacherous ice and snow. The trail extends 33 miles from Dyea to Lake Bennett. Those who could not afford to buy or rent a horse to help haul their gear, were forced to haul it up the trail on their backs -- a few pounds at a time. If they hauled 50 pounds each trip, then about 20 trips were required. If they were stronger and could haul 100 pounds each trip, then only 10 trips were required. But how did they protect their remaining gear at both ends of the trail from theft? This story is told in vivid detail at the National Park office in Skagway complete with photographs of Dead-Horse Gulch, which was a place where horses sometimes fell from the trail to their death in the gulch. In winter the carcasses did not decompose, so the gulch was strewn with the mangled bodies of these frozen, dead horses. One of the classic photos in the museum depicts a trail of “stampeders” climbing up the steep trail to the pass, single-file through the snow. Along the trail are pieces of equipment discarded to lighten the loads.
But according to Steven, JW did not climb the Chilkoot trail. He and others found another, “safer” route somewhere west of the Chilkoot trail. The details of how and why they took this alternate route are unknown. Was it really a safer route or were they simply seeking a place to bypass the Canadian Mounted Police inspection station in Chilkoot Pass? According to Dick, he searched the RCMP rolls in the Skagway Museum for JW’s name without success. For those who did not have the required 2000 pounds of supplies, it is not too difficult to imagine that many of these adventurous men and boys were unwilling to return home without first trying to find alternate solutions to the problem of reaching Dawson. But according to JW’s personal paperback handbook (“a brown, crumbling handbook” given to Dick by Fanny Heacock and now in the U. S. Park Service offices in Skagway), he had all the supplies required by the RCMP. Maybe he simply wanted to get to Dawson City as quickly as possible and saw a quicker and an easier route. Maybe he wished to avoid the hassles imposed by the RCMP. On the other hand, it is somewhat difficult to imagine that this Quaker boy would discard the moral underpinnings of his faith so easily to illegally expedite his trip.
Among Joseph’s supplies was his trusty cornet. He was a musician and must have figured that he could earn a living by playing music to lonely or playful miners. It was not necessary for him to strike gold in Dawson to survive -- he could depend on making a living with his music. If he found a little gold along the way, so much the better. Maybe he played his cornet in the colorful businesses of Skagway before he began his climb. Once beyond Chilkoot Pass, the supplies still had to be hauled over rough, rocky, tundra to Lake Bennett, where it could be floated down the Lake to the Teslin River, which then flows into the Yukon River and ultimately to the Klondike -- a distance of about 350 miles as the crow flies and longer by boat. Prospectors built rafts and boats and floated supplies on practically anything that would float. JW told cousin Dick about his heavily loaded, folding canvas boat which began to drag bottom somewhere along the way. JW was forced to jump into the icy river to save the boat and supplies. He then quickly built a fire with which to warm his chilled body and dry out his clothing. Because these lakes and rivers are cold at any time of the year, this information does not apprise us of the time of the year that he made his trip. But since the lakes and rivers often freeze solid in the winter, we may be safe in assuming that this portion of his trip took place sometime between spring thaw and winter freeze-up -- maybe about June to December.
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Climb Up and Slide Down |
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Dyea and Skagua Trails |
We know that JW reached Dawson City, where again he played his cornet wherever it would earn some money. Apparently, he also tried his hand at prospecting, but with very limited success. However, somewhere along the way he acquired some gold nuggets and was able to support himself. According to Steven, one night a man “jumped him,” but running as fast as he could he outran his attacker, dove into a doorway and escaped. He was also able to support himself by hunting game animals whenever possible. Once while traveling solo through some white-water rapids, he saw a deer swimming in the river. According to Steven, “He was a terrific marksman!” He shot the deer, but before he could get to it, two guys in a boat beat him to the deer and stole it. Later in his life, he kept a souvenir of this adventure that he showed to his kids and grand-kids – the foot and claws of an eagle he shot somewhere in Canada.
According to Steven “at the end of several months in the goldfield at Dawson, he returned to the states down the Yukon River (north) crossing in and out of the arctic circle. The Yukon river empties into the Bearing Sea where he took passage on a ship from that port back to Seattle.”
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JW played in something like this |
“He returned to the states down-river on one of several sternwheelers.” These stern-wheelers often ran aground while negotiating the tricky Yukon River. Once while the crew worked to free the boat, JW went ashore. It was apparently summer because he picked an arctic flower (Pat suggests that maybe it was the Alaska State Flower -- a forget-me-not) along the river bank and pressed it between the pages of his paper notebook. His mind was apparently not on prospecting, but on his childhood friend, Fanny Knowles. When he returned to Iowa, this same flower was used to help capture Fanny’s heart. Grandma Fanny still kept the flower 50 years later, when she showed it to her son, Steven. JW also carried home a few gold nuggets earned from playing in dance bands of Dawson City and Skagway.
This is a revised version of this story about Grandpa J. W. Heacock’s year of adventure in the Klondike Gold Rush. Both Steven and Dick Heacock have made corrections and additions. If anyone has any memories of this adventure that are not already included in this story or any corrections to dates, places or anything else, please send them to me and I will weave them into a third iteration of this story. Consider this the second draft of the story provided primarily to stimulate memories so that we can make this story as complete and accurate as possible. It is family history that I think is too important, or at least interesting, to lose. If you are keeping these stories filed under “family history” or something, you may wish to erase the old one and replace it with this one.
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Gold Nugget |
Table of Contents: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6813612681836200616/3382423676443906063?hl=en
