The Indigenous people in north-west America used to trade in copper nuggets prior to European expansion. Most of the tribes were aware that gold existed in the region, but it wasn’t valued by them. The Russians and the Hudson’s Bay Company had both explored the Yukon in the first half of the 19th century, but ignored the rumours of gold for fur trading as it offered immediate and better profits.

In the second half of the 19th century, American prospectors began making deals with the Native Tlingit and Tagish tribes. They opened the important routes of Chilkoot and White Pass, and reached the Yukon valley between 1870 and 1890.

The Klondike Gold Rush was the most famous gold rush in Canadian history. Over one hundred years ago, a handful of prospectors discovered gold nuggets in a tributary of the Klondike River, which later resulted in the migration of 100,000 prospectors. It triggered a stampede of more than one hundred thousand people into the Yukon. They travelled thousands of kilometres to reach the district, then rafted down the Yukon River and established a mining camp on a mud flat.

On the Alaskan side of the border a log-town was established in 1893 on the Yukon River called the Circle City. In three years, it grew to become “the Paris of Alaska”, with about 1,200 inhabitants, saloons, opera houses, schools, and libraries. But soon it became a ghost town, when large gold deposits were found upstream on the Klondike.