Word: carmack
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Dates: during 1958-1958
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...reassembled all the familiar and unfamiliar characters of the Bonanza and El Dorado days, missing no nugget of color and adventure. A squaw man named George Washington ("Siwash George") Carmack staked the first big claim on Aug. 17, 1896, a day still celebrated in Yukon territory. There it was, "lying thick between the flaky slabs of rock like cheese in a sandwich." Charley Anderson bought a claim when drunk for $800, tried to get his money back when sober and could not. Out of it came $1,000,000 and his lifelong nickname, the Lucky Swede. Soon the world outside...
...jammed with the tragic stories of tenderfeet who tried to reach the golden creeks by boat, over the dread mountain passes and even over a sure-death glacier route. Even those who found great wealth often lost it, to gamblers, business crooks, the girls, or over the bars. Carmack died respectably, leaving his second wife, a former brothel-keeper, a fortune. But Lucky Swede Anderson, divorced by his dance-hall girl, died pushing a wheelbarrow in a sawmill for $3.25 a day. Lucky always denied that he ever had a million: "The most I ever had was nine hundred thousand...