This classic in Yukon gold rush literature was originally published in 1900 and has long been out of print. Tappan Adney, a New York journalist, was dispatched to the Yukon in 1897, at the height of the gold fever, to “furnish news and pictures of the new gold fields.” The pages contain excellent descriptions of the people, places, events, and experiences of the Klondike stampede. Adney was not only a good writer, he was also an accomplished photographer, and there are over 150 photographs and drawings in the text, adding an important visual dimension to the book.

Tappan Adney, born in 1868 in Athens, Ohio, was an artist, a writer, and a photographer. He was credited with saving the art of birchbark canoe construction and built more than 100 models of different types. During World War I, he was an engineering officer for the Royal Military College. His book about the Klondike Gold Rush has become a well-loved standard. He worked in Montreal, where he worked as a consultant on aboriginal lore, then retired to Woodstock, New Brunswick, where his wife, Minnie Bell Sharp, had been born. He died in 1950.

Tappan Adney's profile page

In The Klondike Stampede, Tappan Adney brings the seasoned eye of an experienced and competent journalist to the task of recording an extraordinary event ... Adney did not succumb to the tendency toward overstatement and exaggeration that is so common among the Klondike accounts. Instead, he captured, vividly and convincingly, in words and images, one of the more remarkable events of the nineteenth century.

The Whitehorse Star

Reprinting The Klondike Stampede was a good idea as it is the most readable and informative contemporary account of the Gold Rush excitement.

Journal of the West

With the approach of the centenary of the Klondike gold rush, this book deserves to be widely read.

BC Studies