| Discovery
Getting
to
the
Gold
Americans
Abroad |
The sudden and dramatic population growth
overwhelmed Alaska's postal service. People
waited months for their mail, especially during winter. When the steamship
or dog sled finally arrived, miners could anticipate standing in line for
hours, sometimes even days, before getting their mail. Those who were unable
to leave their claims hired others to stand in line for them. Stampeders'
devotion to their mail was so strong that when the postmaster of Glenora
burned several sacks of mail instead of delivering it, he had to be spirited
out of town ahead of a mob.
Only a few mail routes were in place prior
to the rush. The postal services were no match for the quickly-growing,
highly mobile population. Because of inadequate arrangements between U.S.
and Canadian postal officials, bags of mail addressed to Klondikers piled
up in Seattle, Juneau, Skagway and Dyea. The
worst service was that received by the Americans in Dawson during the first
years of the rush. During that winter, letters mailed in the U.S. addressed
to Dawson were placed in the Circle City mail sacks. That mail then traveled
through
Dawson, as the carrier traveled on to Circle City, where the letters were
sorted and then finally brought back to Dawson for distribution.
On March 3, 1898, the U.S. Post Office Department
appointed John Philip Clum as the Postal Inspector
for the Alaskan Territory. Clum arrived in Skagway on March 26th. He immediately
set to work improving the area's mail service. During his months in Alaska,
Clum traveled over 8,000 miles and established more than a dozen post offices
in the territory. He carried everything he needed to create a post office
with him--postage stamps, mailbags, postal locks, keys and postmarking
devices. |
