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Recovered Hoard · Recovered

Bonanza Creek (Klondike)

Gold struck 1896, Near Dawson City, Yukon, Canada
RECOVERED
Evidence status: Historical tradition. no documented source (historical tradition); legal status unknown (manual verification recommended). This account is presented as historical tradition, not verified fact. Manual verification recommended. Repository evidence: 0 sources · 0 timeline events · 0 media items · legal unknown · view on the Map Evidence on file: historical tradition

Bonanza Creek (Klondike): still unexplained.

The Klondike Gold Rush motherlode

The law of this ground: Most ground is staked; pan only on the designated free public claim or with the claim-holder's permission.
The subject
developing the photograph…
The manifest
The Klondike Gold Rush motherlode
The account

Rabbit Creek was nothing, a trickle in the Yukon bush, until George Carmack and Skookum Jim lifted a thumb of gold from its gravel in August of 1896. They renamed it Bonanza by firelight that same night. A hundred thousand stampeders sold all they had to follow, and most arrived to find every foot of ground already staked. The creeks pay gold to this day, and one stretch near Dawson is kept free for anyone with a pan and the nerve to kneel in that cold water.

How it was found
  • On 16 August 1896, George Carmack and his Tagish companions Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie found coarse gold thick in the gravel of what they renamed Bonanza Creek, the strike that set off the Klondike Gold Rush.
What the record holds

What remains open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
What we know, and what we don't
Established

No documentary claim is yet established. The account rests on tradition.

Still open
  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
The evidence room

No documentary or visual exhibits have been located yet. The trail below and the open leads are where this dossier grows next — every exhibit that enters here carries a source.

Where the trail points now
  • Search Library of Congress + DPLA (IIIF) for period cartography of the site.
  • Run Chronicling America for dated newspaper mentions.
  • Query NARA for archival records tied to the site.

Have a source, a map, or a clipping? Add a lead and it enters the record with its citation.

Start the hunt here
The first leads, so no one walks in cold.
Sources and the record
Related case files

The full hunt kit

Starting brief, what's known and disputed, evidence timeline, source list, map card, coordinate-confidence and legal-access summaries, and a field checklist, free with a Fellowship account.

Latest Word From the Newswire

Context, not proof. The dossier's own sources remain the evidence record.

Checking the wire…

Chart position 64.060°, -139.340° (approx.) View on the Map