In 1897, the United States was mired in the worst economic depression that the country had yet endured. When newspapers announced that gold was to be found in wildly enriching quantities at the Klondike River region of the Yukon, a mob of economically desperate Americans swarmed north.

Within weeks, tens of thousands of them were embarking towards some of the harshest terrain on the planet, in the middle of winter, woefully unprepared and with no experience at all in mining or mountaineering. It was a mass delusion that quickly proved deadly: avalanches, shipwrecks, starvation, murder.

Today’s guest is Brian Castner, author of STAMPEDE: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike. We discuss a number of characters who joined the Gold Rush, including Jack London, who would make his fortune but not in gold; Colonel Samuel Steele, who tried to save the stampeders from themselves; the notorious gangster Soapy Smith; goodtime girls; Skookum Jim; and the hotel entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney. The unvarnished tale of this mass migration is always striking, revealing the amazing truth of what people will do for a chance to be rich.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.