Seattle and the Klondike stampede

Gold was found in August 1896 on a creek that feeds the Klondike River in northwestern Canada. Almost a year later, on July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland docked in Seattle from St. Michael, Alaska, with 68 prospectors and what newspapers called "a ton of gold." A similarly laden ship had reached San Francisco two days earlier.

Seattle merchants advertised the city as the gateway to the gold fields. The National Park Service says that of about 100,000 people who started north, some 70,000 passed through Seattle. Between July 1897 and March 1898 — the peak months — Seattle merchants sold as much as $25 million in goods, up from an estimated $325,000 in all of 1896. The city's population grew to 240,000 by 1910.

Congress created Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park on June 30, 1976, with units in Washington and Alaska. The Seattle unit occupies the Cadillac Hotel in Pioneer Square, a brick building put up after the 1889 fire and standing during the stampede. The sources below are the National Park Service history of Seattle's gold-rush year.