RetroFedActresses bound for boom-towns during the Klondike Gold Rush, Canada, 1897
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PugJesus
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Such a form-fitting mining outfit… Looks like a Star Trek character stranded in Earth’s past.
It’s hard for me to exactly undestand what these gold rushes were really like, not having participated in anything remotely like them, nor friends & family I know of. Certainly it’s easy-enough to grasp the excitement factor & occasional success stories, but the other stories of misery, heartbreak and tragedy are also rife.
I guess Deadwood and various GN’s will have to do for me.
Some helpful info on the Klondike Rush, with lots more pics:
https://historycollection.com/visual-history-klondike-gold-rush/
The opportunity to go from poor sod to multi-millionaire or even more, virtually overnight is very compelling.
Add in that of you didn’t get insanely rich you could also become kind of rich.
Then there’s the rest - people who saw an opportunity to sell a shovel for the equivalent of $2000 today, because inflation was rampant in these mining towns.
All true, but from my sense, it was also common for such folks to lose their relative wealth in any number of ways, starting with gambling, whoring-boozing, and outright theft by various opportune colleagues.
Yeah, if I was going to try to make money in those crazy situations, and I possessed the requisite moral compass, it would be by similar exploitation.
Even so the two rushes mentioned only lasted 3yrs each, so unpredictability was everywhere, which is again why I’d want to angle one of the more stable profit-making schemes. And then you’d be directly participating in situations which regularly produced some very sore losers…
Still, all notes from afar!
Oh, for sure.
Just pointing out what drove people - the opportunity to become an equivalent of a billionaire today in a very short period was really compelling.