1907 Poole Brothers Map of Canadian Pacific Steamship Lines, Yukon Gold Rush

This is a 1907 Poole Brothers map of the Pacific Coast of British Columbia and environs, produced for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Though highlighting multiple steamship routes in the region, it was produced in the wake of the Yukon Gold Rush, the impetus for establishing most of these services.

A Closer Look

Coverage extends from Dawson (City) in the north to Portland, Oregon, in the south, with the main focus being British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and the southernmost portion of Alaska. Waterways, settlements, mountains (some with elevations), glaciers, rail lines (Canadian Pacific in thick black lines with stations noted, competitors with narrower black lines), and steamship routes are marked throughout. Promotional text and images on the verso discuss sights and services (including times, fares, and particular ships) all along the routes seen on the recto.

The steamship lines extending beyond the scope of the map to Yokohama and Honolulu stand out prominently towards the bottom. The other lines transited up and down the Pacific Coast, often slicing through narrow straits or channels between large islands and/or the mainland. By the time of this map's production, a railway linked the steamer passengers disembarking at Skagway and Dyea to the mining towns further north; this was the White Pass and Yukon Route, curiously marked here as 'Pac. and Arc.' Ironically, by the time the railway was completed in 1900, the gold rush had largely ended, but it found another use as a freight railway. br>
The 'Provisional International Boundary' east of Juneau was a virtual non-issue until the Yukon Gold Rush and then became a major bone of contention between the United States and Canada, only resolved by an international tribunal in the years immediately preceding this map's production (much to the annoyance of the Canadians, who were denied access to the Pacific near the gold diggings).

Manuscript Notes

Certainly, one of the more interesting features of this example is the handwriting and illustrations at left, describing the beautiful view, complete with a rainbow, spotted between the mountains and a glacier during the owner's 1909 voyage. The purpose of the owner's trip is unclear, but by this time, the voyage was more likely to be sightseeing or visiting relatives than gold mining.

The Yukon or Klondike Gold Rush

The Yukon or Klondike Gold Rush is a watershed event in the modern history of Alaska and western Canada, transforming the region and setting the course of its economic and environmental history for decades afterward. The original Yukon gold discovery was made in 1896 in the Bonanza (Rabbit) Creek area, but it quickly became apparent that the gold regions were far vaster. Word traveled quickly, and by July 1897, a stampede of prospectors from throughout the United States and Canada were headed to the Klondike. This was compounded by the fact that a series of bank failures in 1897 left the American economy in disarray and many out of work. Over 40,000 prospectors and their families moved to Alaska, generally by way of Seattle or perhaps San Francisco. The Klondike Gold Rush drew such notables as future U.S. President William H. Taft, adventurer Frederick Russell Burnham, and author W. W. White.

The near-endless demand for transporting people and goods to the Yukon prompted the creation of several steamship companies. The Canadian Pacific Railway, which had experience operating long-distance steamships in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, cleverly capitalized on this demand by setting up a steamer service that linked to its transcontinental railway routes terminating at Vancouver. Although Skagway/Dyea were the main destinations because of their proximity to the gold fields (as seen here), many intermediary stops and connections were added to the route.

With the Klondike already inundated with diggers by 1898, new sources of the precious metal were sought in Alaska's wilderness. When news of the abundance of gold around Nome was announced, thousands of miners left Dawson City (the overnight mining boom town established in the Klondike labeled here at the top-left) to descend on the coastal region around Nome, far to the north of the region depicted here. The effect was so profound that the gold rush around Nome effectively ended the Klondike Gold Rush by shifting it further to the west and north. While most of the mining boom towns established in southern Alaska and the Yukon disappeared virtually overnight, others (such as Skagway, Whitehorse, and Dawson City) had grown to the point that they suffered a deep setback but were not entirely abandoned. As the promotional text on the verso indicates, some effort was made to buoy the region through tourism and seasonal residents, which made slow progress at first but now is an important part of the region's economy.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the Chicago firm Poole Brothers for the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was printed in several editions between 1907 and 1912, with a similar map being published afterward under different titles until the early 1920s. A 1907 edition of the map belonging to the University of British Columbia has been digitized by Adam Matthew Digital and appears in the OCLC among the holdings of several institutions as such, but physical examples are rare, with an alternate printing of the 1907 edition (curiously lacking an attribution to Poole Bros.) only appearing in the institutional collections the Alaska State Library's Helen Wilson Luzadder Papers.