Between Gold & Gravestones: Uncovering the Lost Dead of the Klondike Gold Rush

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Despite being such a well-recorded event in Canadian history, the number of Klondike Gold Rush dead remains unknown. This paper aims to rediscover the dead of the Klondike Gold Rush and unravel why the history of so many intrepid individuals became lost to time.

Relying upon evidence from journals, newspapers, death records and correspondence, alongside online cemetery databases, it is suggested that the unique nature of the Gold Rush likely contributed to a high mortality rate and lack of persisting evidence. Asserting that the number of deaths was so high and dispersed so widely over such a wild territory that many deaths went unnoticed and unrecorded at a time and in an environment of impermanence without formalized record keeping or infrastructure where every individual had their own well-being to consider. An analysis supported by the number of death and burial locations found compared to the numbers suggested within firsthand accounts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• 2024 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow