Free previewStop 9 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square
A Ton of Gold, a Ton of Groceries
You're on Second Avenue South in Pioneer Square, at the last stop of the walk. The brick building in front of you is the old Cadillac Hotel, where a single room once went for 25 cents a night. Today it holds the Seattle branch of a national park, a small, free museum. The rest of that park sits in Skagway, Alaska, and the gold fields it commemorates lie farther still, in Canada's Yukon.
The rush began in August 1896, when George Carmack and two Tagish men, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found gold on a creek feeding the Klondike River in the Yukon.
The world didn't hear for almost a year. Then, in July 1897, a steamer called the Portland docked on the Seattle waterfront with prospectors coming home from the Yukon. Seattle's newspaper called its cargo a ton of gold.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 9 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
