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Item Details
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| Heading: |
(Alaska - Gold Rush) |
| Author: |
Meador, John |
| Title: |
Autograph Letter, signed from a miner in the Alaskan Gold Rush |
| Place: |
Rolston's Cam, Kobuck River, Alaska |
| Publisher: |
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| Date: |
September 24, 1899 (Postmark) |
| Item # : |
223739 |
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| Sale Number |
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473 |
| Lot Number |
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4 |
| Sale Name |
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| Fine Americana - Cartography |
| Sale Date |
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02/16/2012 |
| Price realized |
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$ 600 |
| includes 20% buyer's premium |
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| Description: |
| Autograph Letter, signed. 2 pp. + envelope. |
| To his brother in Kentucky. “…We got to Kotzebue Sound July 17th. Aug. 13th we made a landing about two hundred miles up the Kobuck River in a small river boat. The rest of the way we made bv towing small row boats… we would tie a rope one hundred feet long to a boat and three of us would pull while one would stear the boat. We are now in winter quarters at the Par River, a tributary of the Kobuck. We have a log house [banked?] up with dirt to the top about two feet thick, covered with moss. It is warm and comfortable. Got up River too late to prospect much so far. The indications a good so far. There has been one stampede already though I did not join in it. There are four of us in one cabin. The sun shines five hours a day now, she will soon disappear. When she comes back we can travel by sleds. The natives use dogs to pull them…” Near the end of the Klondike Gold Rush, which brought some 100,000 gold prospectors to the Yukon, far to the northwest in the frozen arctic region of Alaska, the “Kobuk River Stampede” saw another 2,000 hopeful miners setting out to reach rumored gold fields up the 280-mile River. Most, experiencing below-zero temperatures of the long, dark winter turned back on being told by Native residents that no gold was to be found. Meador was apparently one who stayed the course, though it’s unknown whether he was one of the very fortunate few who ever struck it rich on the Kobuk. |
| Condition: |
| Creased, light wear; very good. |
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