Start Date
4-9-2021 3:15 PM
End Date
4-9-2021 4:50 PM
Disciplines
History
Subjects
Gold mines and mining -- Yukon, Klondike River Valley (Yukon) -- Gold discoveries, Alaska -- History -- 1867-1959, Horses -- Alaska, Horses -- Health
Description
Abstract: The Klondike Gold Rush is known in part for the hardships that men and women faced as they travelled the trails to Dawson City in the Yukon. One of the lesser-known aspects of this event is the tragedy that befell thousands of horses that were killed on the Chilkoot and White Pass Trails. The White pass trail would be given the moniker “The Dead Horse Trail.” With so many men trying to get thousands of pounds of goods over the mountain passes from the Alaskan seacoast towns of Skagway and Dyea, pack animals were crucial for the task. However, most if not all of these horses would not survive. This aspect of the gold rush is something that deeply disturbed many gold seekers, and many recounted the horrors years later in their diaries and manuscripts. My paper will ask the question: what were the causes that led to the demise of so many horses on the journey to find gold, and how did they die?
PART OF SESSION 4C. SICKNESS AND DEATH:
Comment: Tom Taylor, Seattle University
Chair: Alyson Roy, University of Idaho
Ben Hecko, University of Portland, undergraduate student
“Plague and Progress: An Analysis of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Reform during the Initial Outbreak of the Black Death”
Anika Esther Martin, Eastern Washington University, undergraduate student
“The ‘English Bath’: English Sweating Sickness and the 1529 Continental Outbreak”
Patricia A. McManigal, Boise State University, undergraduate student
“The Holodomor: The Trickle-Down effect of Political and Economic Choices”
Brian O’Riley, Eastern Washington University, graduate student
“The Klondike Gold Rush and the Dead Horse Trail”
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/35238
Included in
The Klondike Gold Rush and the Dead Horse Trail
Abstract: The Klondike Gold Rush is known in part for the hardships that men and women faced as they travelled the trails to Dawson City in the Yukon. One of the lesser-known aspects of this event is the tragedy that befell thousands of horses that were killed on the Chilkoot and White Pass Trails. The White pass trail would be given the moniker “The Dead Horse Trail.” With so many men trying to get thousands of pounds of goods over the mountain passes from the Alaskan seacoast towns of Skagway and Dyea, pack animals were crucial for the task. However, most if not all of these horses would not survive. This aspect of the gold rush is something that deeply disturbed many gold seekers, and many recounted the horrors years later in their diaries and manuscripts. My paper will ask the question: what were the causes that led to the demise of so many horses on the journey to find gold, and how did they die?
PART OF SESSION 4C. SICKNESS AND DEATH:
Comment: Tom Taylor, Seattle University
Chair: Alyson Roy, University of Idaho
Ben Hecko, University of Portland, undergraduate student
“Plague and Progress: An Analysis of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Reform during the Initial Outbreak of the Black Death”
Anika Esther Martin, Eastern Washington University, undergraduate student
“The ‘English Bath’: English Sweating Sickness and the 1529 Continental Outbreak”
Patricia A. McManigal, Boise State University, undergraduate student
“The Holodomor: The Trickle-Down effect of Political and Economic Choices”
Brian O’Riley, Eastern Washington University, graduate student
“The Klondike Gold Rush and the Dead Horse Trail”