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SUMMER 2021
FREE
Women of the Gold Rush locals carry on the legacy
By Aly De Angelus A single-file line of ankle-length petticoats sloshed across the Dyea River. Not one breath was audible as the waters drowned out even the clicks and clacks of their button-down shoes. The women skirted 14 pounds of wet cloth to the shoreline, landing in the muddy Klondike Gold Rush community inhabited by grizzly men searching for riches. But any men who expected to claim these women as trophy wives were mistaken. Weeks of travel toward hard labor, rough terrain and hunger had left the women of 1898 ready for their own adventures. Women challenged norms just by coming to Skagway. The Klondike Gold Rush ushered a powerful union of women stampeders into Skagway just as women elsewhere were challenging male domination of the era. The taste of liberation during the Industrial Revolution made it possible for more women to work outside the home. The risks of leaving their homes to create a future for themselves, to consider running a business or starting a family, is precisely why these women are considered the pioneers of femi-
nism in Skagway. “They often labored harder, under more unpleasant circumstances than their respectable sisters to help carve a civilized niche into unforgiving wilderness,” Lael Morgan, author of “Good Time Girls,” wrote of prostitutes and dance hall women. “Most were extraordinarily independent, not only for their time but by today’s standards as well,” she wrote in her 1999 book. When women came to town, they often were met with opposition. Notorious conman Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith and his men controlled the town. John Muir described it as “a horde of fools.” Women rushed to the north for the same reason men did -- wealth, adventure or both. One out of 10 gold rush stampeders was a woman. While women were outnumbered, they challenged social norms just by being there. Women of higher class, considered respectable and elite, were the only stories shared at the time in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Accounts of women working in dance halls and even brothels were nowhere to be found, an continued on page 3
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