Into Alaska - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 99

Interesting Info:
Valdez Gold Rush
The town of Valdez was founded in the late 1800s but did not amount to anything much
like a town proper until the gold rush of 1898 was well underway. In the meantime, Valdez
was widely advertised as the beginning of the “All-American Route,” a miner's best bet for
making it quickly to the gold fields. Imagine their dismay when they were landed on a bare
beach with no town to speak of and no real trail either. I am sure it didn't help, once winter
fell, to discover that Valdez is subjected to about 8 m /25 ft of snow each year.
Four thousand gold fevered stampeders landed in1898, pitching their tents on the swampy
shores of Prince William Sound while they organized their supplies and gear. The Canadian
government would not let them into the Yukon without a year's worth of supplies so this
meant repeatedly pulling a packed sled up and over the Valdez by hand. Over and over again
until the required ton of supplies had been moved.
The list of supplies provided below by the Valdez Museum provides an idea of the quantities
that each man had to move forward. Avalanches, snow blindness, illness, glacial crevasses
and the extreme physical challenge of the route took its toll and many died before they even
made it to the gold fields.
Required Supplies
Some of these items seem a might curious and frankly if I had to hump this stuff up over
a glacier in the middle of winter I could do without some of it - like 2 bottles of Jamaican
ginger.