Women of the Klondike Goldrush.
Kate Carmack – Discovering Gold in the Klondike
Nellie Cashman – Pioneering the Mining Camps
Actresses crossing the Dyea River in Alaska.
Klondike Women in Dawson. Yukon.
Courageous women from all walks of life joined the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898. Some were poor, others were professional, many were wives who joined their husbands, and others came for adventure or out of desperation.
When a San Francisco, California newspaper in 1897 reported, “Sacks of gold from mines of the Klondike,” gold fever swept the nation, bringing hoards of both men and women into Alaska and the Yukon of Canada.
Among the mix were miners, businesswomen, journalists, shopkeepers, cooks, nuns, entertainers, teachers, physicians, hotel proprietors, and the inevitable prostitutes who arrived in all of the early mining camps across the continent. These women faced no ordinary circumstances.
Most stampeders, male or female, were not physically conditioned to the required strenuous life. Some died along the way, and others turned back. As dreams gave way to harsh realities, some women found themselves in situations they never imagined and turned to employment in the sex industry as their last option.
Kate Carmack was one of the original discoverers of the gold that led to the Klondike Gold Rush.
The first woman of the Klondike Gold Rush was Shaaw Tláa, better known as Kate Carmack. She was a Tagish Indian woman married to George Carmack and was with the men when they first discovered gold in Bonanza Creek in 1896.
The next women to join the gold rush were prostitutes, who knew that the scarcity of females in the region would bring men to their doors.
But, the 1890s was a decade of change in America, and with a shift in social beliefs, many women joined the workforce; others got involved in women’s rights, suffragette, and alcohol temperance organizations; and about 1,500 women went up the White Pass or the Chilkoot Trail to join the many men of the Klondike Goldrush.
Some of these included journalists Emma Kelly and Helen Dare; Hannah S. Gould of New York and Mary W. Board of New Jersey led much-publicized women’s expeditions; some, such as Belinda Mulrooney and Martha Black Purdy, made their money in the gold mining business; others, such as Harriet Pullen and Mollie Walsh, were entrepreneurs; and yet others, such as Nellie Cashman and Klondike Kate, spent their time serving others.
Often, these women faced even greater hardships than their male counterparts because society viewed them as second-class citizens. Yet they survived, triumphed, and even thrived due to the tenacious pursuit of their dreams or livelihoods.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated March 2025.
Also See:
Harriet Pullen, Skagway, Alaska Entrepreneur.
Historic Women Photo Galleries
Sources:
Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park
National Park Service