Trail to the Klondike Book

When the ship Portland steamed into Seattle in the summer of 1897 with more than a ton of gold, it set off an around-the-world fever, launched Seattle as the Queen City of the Northwest, and initiated one of the most extraordinary treks in American history. In the brutally cold winter of 1897-98, 100,000 people, drawn by the glitter of chance and fortune, stampeded north to the gold fields of the Yukon. In 1969-70, Don McCune - for twenty-one years writer and narrator of KOMO TV's Emmy Award winning program, Exploration Northwest - retraced the Klondikers' trail with his camera crew, producing five episodes on the gold rush. That experience inspired McCune to write the manuscript for this book, which includes contemporary accounts by stampeders combined with observations by the Exploration Northwest crew of the trail as it appeared more than seventy years after the gold rush. Trail to the Klondike features more than 120 photographs, including evocative images from the most accomplished of the gold rush photographers, Eric Hegg. Hegg's images are paired with those of the McCune crew to provide a "then-and-now" portrait of the Trail to the Klondike.

Trail to the Klondike, published in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Klondike gold rush, retraces the route through Alaska's Chilkoot Pass. Author Don McCune, first learned about the Klondike as a station manager in Fairbanks where he was known as "the voice of Alaska." McCune retraced the trail in 1969 and 1970 for his television program "Exploration Northwest" and the book grew from that project. He worked on it for years, contrasting the photos of E.A. Hegg, who documented the Gold Rush, with those of Gerry ter Haar and Lyle Kleinschmidt who were part of the TV group. McCune dedicated the book "to the many Klondikers whose stories will never be told yet whose struggle is evident through the eyes of the camera."