Bicycles on the Klondike trail: a gold-rush craze meets ice, snow and flat tires

The Klondike gold rush began in the middle of a worldwide bicycle craze. A National Park Service article from Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park looks at what happened when the two met: a few riders reached Dawson, some stampeders carried their broken-down bikes, and the trail tested every part of the machine.

A rush for any way north

The steamers Excelsior and Portland reached the docks of San Francisco and Seattle in mid-July 1897, and huge numbers of people became desperate for any way to the Yukon goldfields. Ticket sellers could make a fortune without leaving the waterfront by charging ludicrous prices. Dogs vanished from West Coast city streets, and over the following year thousands of horses and other pack animals died on the rugged trails, along with men chasing gold most would never reach.

Plans for specially designed bicycles for the White Pass and Chilkoot Trails were reported across the country. One early proposal, by A. C. Harris, described a "Klondike bicycle" that was half bicycle and half four-wheeled freight vehicle: about fifty pounds, solid rubber tires an inch and a half across, a steel frame wrapped in rawhide for handling in low temperatures, and two folding side wheels about fourteen inches across. It was estimated to carry 500 pounds. The plan was to load it with half a miner's equipment, drag it ten miles or so on four wheels, then fold up the side wheels, ride back and fetch the rest. Meanwhile two cyclists from the Brooklyn Bicycle Club set out for Dawson City, and people discussed building a bike path to the Klondike.

Flat tires were a big problem on the way to the Yukon, and stampeders were sometimes seen carrying broken-down bikes, which defeated the purpose. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-25339.

Bikes as pack frames

Some owners used their bicycles to carry goods rather than themselves. Two bicycles that reached Skagway early had their pedals removed and racks and frames added so they could carry two-hundred-pound loads. Nobody could simply ride over the White Pass Trail: the North West Mounted Police required everyone to bring a year's supply of food, which with a tent, stove, clothing and other supplies came to nearly a ton of goods. That load could never fit on a bicycle, and bicycles of the time were heavy anyway, so one was often just another burden.

A painting showing the penny-farthing, with one large front wheel and a smaller back one. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-04039.

Riding in winter

Despite the obstacles, the Skagway newspaper the Daily Alaskan reported bicycles on the White Pass Trail in the winter of 1898-99, and they became common the winter after. The paper claimed that the trip from Bennett to Dawson took ten to fourteen days by "wheel", the era's word for a bicycle. The first known cyclist to reach Dawson from Skagway, in March 1899, was W. J. Terry. He told the Seattle paper The Argus that he made the trip in eight days, sometimes covering 125 miles in a day, and that his was the only bike in the region. The article thinks he was probably mistaken, though bikes were rare enough that he may not have met another.

Travel became far more reasonable once roadhouses stood at every twenty miles along the trail, so riders could travel light. Roads were still few, though. River travel was preferred in summer, which left cyclists struggling to find a passable route from Skagway to Dawson City until the rivers froze.

In theory, bicycles had merits: riders could follow tracks left by dogsleds, a bike was faster than a dog team or a horse, and it needed no feed. In practice, riders faced flat tires, frozen bearings, eyestrain, snow blindness and the risk of high speeds over ice. Terry patched a flat by pouring water into the puncture and letting it freeze. Edward Jesson, who wrote an account of riding down the Yukon after the height of the rush, tried to ride at 48 below zero and found his tires frozen as stiff as gas pipe, the oil in his bearing frozen and his nose freezing as he held the handlebars with both hands.

A line of horses makes its way through the snow, with a solo stampeder and his bicycle at left. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-01569.

The bicycle on its owner's back

No detailed account of a bicycle climb over White Pass exists, but the diary of John A. Clark, who crossed Thompson Pass between Valdez and Fairbanks in 1906, gives an idea. Gales had piled snow on the mountain face to depths of twenty to a hundred feet, and a blizzard met his party at the start. The steepness of the trail and the fresh, wind-blown snow made riding impossible, so they carried the bikes on their backs into the gale. Clark's verdict was that a man with a bicycle on his back counts as a pedestrian and as a fool.

During the bicycle craze, people experimented with different designs and sizes. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-33911.

A newspaper article reported that a party of six who had gone out to Five Fingers by bicycle found the snowy trail, though very narrow, perfectly adequate for bicycles, pedestrians and narrow sleds, and had covered 101 miles on their best day. Not every trail was so kind. Clark described cycling on a frozen river at thirty below with a wind of about sixty miles per hour: the riders braked, held the bike straight and trusted luck, fell on glare ice, and hit overflow, water that had not frozen, where they had to carry their wheels and splash through, then kick the ice off the chains. Jesson, riding down the Yukon in 1900, was blown into snow banks and ice jams, broke a handlebar, and hobbled on a hurt knee.

Jesson's bike had no derailleur, no variable gears, no freewheel and no brakes, so he slowed by backpedaling. That was not unusual: few bikes had features for the harsh climate. Some northern cyclists used tires made for ice, but most rode the same wheels their relatives in the south did. Clark, riding several years later, had a coaster brake.

Selling wheels to stampeders

Seattle papers reported bicycle sales to stampeders on their way to Dawson. In March 1900 The Argus wrote that no fewer than a dozen wheels had been sold in the city for Dawson in two weeks, that the trail was said to be fit for wheels in March, and that scarcely a steamer sailed north without bicycles. By 1903 there were enough bicycles in Dawson to be considered a nuisance. Bicycles provided entertainment, athletic competition and transportation there, and were used in the rushes to Dawson, Nome and Fairbanks. In Skagway, evidence of the bicycle still turns up in historical photographs.

Sources

• National Park Service, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, article "Gold Rush Bicycles" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/klgo-gold-rush-bicycles.htm), written by Madison Heslop, a 2011 volunteer, and edited by Karl Gurcke, the park's historian, in April 2012, and originally given as a KHNS radio talk; pictures from the Library of Congress; rewritten in hubnx's own words.