Pacific Northwest Collection: Alaska Exhibits & Digital Collections

Cries of "Gold! Gold! Gold!" sent over 100,000 optimistic "stampeders" rushing to Dawson City and the Klondike gold fields in 1897 and 1898. They believed riches lay waiting for those who could reach this remote northern region.

This exhibit highlights their journey north. For most, this journey was the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of the gold rush. Stampeders were physically unprepared and poorly equipped for the severe northern climate and terrain. Some died and many abandoned the journey. About 40,000 people reached the Klondike, only four of every ten who tried.

This online exhibit was prepared by U.W. Museology student Rebecca Hackman. The original exhibit, also by Hackman, in collaboration with UW Libraries Special Collections and Preservation Division, was displayed in the Special Collections in 1997.

Images in this digital collection document Alaska and Western Canada, primarily the provinces of Yukon Territory and British Columbia depicting scenes of the Gold Rush of 1898, city street scenes, Eskimo and Native Americans of the region, hunting and fishing, and transportation.

The information for this digital collection was researched and prepared by UW Libraries Special Collections and Cataloging staff in 2004. Most of the photographs were taken from the Alaska Collection, and the Canada Collection PH Coll 393. A number of smaller collections relating to this subject were also included in this database.

John N. Cobb, founder of the University of Washington College of Fisheries, was a photographer in his own right. He specialized in the documentation of fisheries in the United States, especially those in Alaska and the Pacific Coast. Among the photographs included in this digital collection are images of salmon, halibut and cod fisheries along the West Coast, whaling activities in Alaska, clamming and oystering industries in Washington, and images reflecting the first 6 or 7 years of the University of Washington College of Fisheries. Also included are photos of cities and landscapes from Cobb's travels.

Only 340 scanned images were selected for this digital collection. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the John N. Cobb Collection no. 418.

The Asahel Curtis Photo Company Photographs of 1,677 items provides one of the most valuable photographic records of Seattle, Washington State, Alaska and the Klondike covering a period from the 1850s until 1940. This Photo Company was the last in a series of photo studios associated with Asahel Curtis. The studio did primarily commercial work and specialized in documenting Pacific Northwest activities.

The digitized images are a mere selection of a set of photographs purchased by the University of Washington Libraries in 1940. The selection was apparently made by Curtis himself and was intended to provide a pictorial, historical overview of the region as documented in the company's work. The original prints are cataloged as Photograph Collection 482 in the Special Collections Division.

The Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7 Photographs include over 200 photographs documenting union meetings, events, portraits of union officers and members--primarily from the 1930s-1950s. Photos dating from the 1970s chronicle the role of the union and its members in the Asian American activism and community organizing in Seattle, including images of rallies, demonstrations, parades, and community events in the International District. The photos illustrate discriminatory labor and housing conditions in Alaskan canneries that were key evidence in civil rights lawsuits against the canneries by the Alaska Cannery Workers Association.

Railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman led a team of twenty-three scientists, including the great naturalist John Muir, on a two month expedition to explore the waters and coastal territory of Alaska. Over 5,000 photographs were taken during the voyage and were used to compile the souvenir album of the expedition presented here with 254 of those images.

Harriman's two-volume souvenir album entitled "A Souvenir of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, May - August, 1899. Volume 1, New York to Cook Inlet" and "...Volume II, Cook Inlet to Bering Strait and the Return Voyage" included photographs by both Edward S. Curtis, one of the official expedition photographers, and other expedition members including C. Hart Merriam and Harriman himself. The photographs in the album are digitally reproduced here in their entirety. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the Souvenir of the Harriman Alaska Expedition Photograph Album Collection PH Coll 333.

An ongoing and expanding collection devoted to the workers in the Pacific Northwest from the 1880s to the 1940s. Many occupations and industries are represented including the logging and lumber industry, shipping, fisheries, oystering,canning and agriculture.

Industries and Occupations is an ongoing digital collection of photographs documenting the workers of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, primarily from the 1880s to the 1940s. Included are images of the logging and lumber industry, shipping, fisheries, oystering and canning, agriculture, blacksmithing, bridge building and road construction, coal and gold mining. The activities of photographers at work, linotype operators and fur trappers are also represented. Because we will be on occasion adding new images to the digital collection, the database will be updated periodically.In addition, our cataloging staff will continue to supplement the metadata attached to each image as new research alters the descriptive records.

Photographs documenting the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes from 1897-1901. Images include depictions of frontier life in Dawson City, the Yukon Territory, and Skagway and Nome, Alaska.

Eric A. Hegg, a native of Sweden, arrived in the Puget Sound region in 1888. Settling in Whatcom County, he opened photographic studios both in New Whatcom and Fairhaven. In the fall of 1897, he joined the thousands of gold seekers heading north. Accompanied by a group of men from Bellingham Bay, he traveled by steamboat up the Inside Passage through British Columbia to his destination in Alaska.

Finding his passage further north closed due to the freezeup on the Yukon River, he settled temporarily in Dyea, Alaska which was the jumping off point for the Chilkoot Trail to Dawson . Here he opened a small photography studio. Later, during the winter of 1897-1898, he established a second, more substantial, studio in Skagway. The photographer Per Edward (Ed) Larss who had arrived in Skagway in March of 1898, was employed by Hegg to assist in documenting the huge migration to the Yukon known as "the Stampede". For a short time, he and Larss made frequent trips to the Chilkoot Pass following the footsteps of the thousands of Klondikers who wound their way up the Dyea River to the Golden Staircase and over over into British Columbia. They also documented scenes along the White Pass Trail. Along the trails they recorded the sail driven sleds, temporary tent towns, piles of snow covered food caches and the many hardships endured by the Klondikers as they neared their goal.

Digitized images are selections from the original collection in UW Libraries Special Collections as the Eric A. Hegg Collection. PH Coll 274.

Between 1893 and 1906 Wilhelm Hester documented both the maritime activities of the Puget Sound Region and of his time spent in Alaska during the gold rush of 1898. He left a remarkable collection of early photos of Nome, Alaska and the surrounding region and a valuable record for the history of ships and shipping in Washington state.

He was born in Germany in 1872, and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1893 with his brother Ernst. There he photographed the tall ships that sailed the Northwest coast loading lumber and grain for markets abroad. Operating from studios in Seattle and Tacoma, he established a commercially successful business by taking and selling photographs of ships from around the world and their crews at various Puget Sound ports, often offering them as souvenirs to the sailors themselves.

Among many Pacific coast sites, this digital collection includes examples of his documentation of ships' crews and sailing vessels, his record of his experiences in Alaska (especially in Nome during the Gold Rush). The original Wilhelm Hester collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the Wilhelm Hester Collection. PH Coll 318.

Frank La Roche Photographs consists of more than 300 photographs depicting scenes of Seattle, Washington state, Alaska, and the western United States and Canada. La Roche (1853-1936), who learned photography in his hometown of Philadelphia, arrived in Seattle after the great fire of June 1889 to find the city in ashes. He opened a gallery in the Kilgen block on 2nd Avenue. In addition to his local work, he made numerous trips to southeastern Alaska and the Yukon Territory photographing among others, scenes during the Klondike gold rush, ca. 1897-1899. These included views of his experiences traveling from Dyea, Alaska over the Chilkoot Pass into British Columbia to reach the gold fields. He sold mounted prints of his travels, but preferred to reach a larger audience through his six-part album entitled Enroute to the Klondike. Some of the images included in this collection have been annotated from excerpts from this publication.

The original collection resides in UW Libraries Special Collections as the Frank La Roche Collection no. 283.

William E. Meed was not a professional photographer, but he compiled one of the most important photographic records of the Klondike between the years 1898 and 1907. He and his wife, Mabel, went to Dawson, Yukon Territory, Canada, in 1898, where he worked in river transportation for about ten years. There, he compiled an extensive documentary collection of some 233 Klondike-related photographs. Some of these were taken by prominent commercial photographers, while others were snapshot photographs taken by himself and his friends. The collection is accompanied by a series of captions derived from what Meed called his Journal, a narrative account of his Klondike experiences that is keyed to the photographs.

Many of the photographs are by well-known photographers such as Eric A. Hegg, Kinsey & Kinsey (Clark Kinsey and Clarence Kinsey), H. J. Goetzman, H. C. Barley, and George G. Cantwell. These depict Klondike mines and mining activities in the Dawson vicinity, Dawson street scenes, views along the Chilkoot Trail and the White Pass & Yukon Route railroad, steamboats and steamboat landings, and other Klondike scenes. William E. Meed was an amateur photographer himself, and took a number of photographs that document his own activities, his wife and family, his friends, and his fellow workers for the Stewart River Co. and aboard the steamboat Prospector.The snapshots show Dawson's cabin residences, the Dawson docks and freighting activities, outings by dogsled, wilderness roadhouses, and domestic scenes.

The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the William E. Meed Collection no. 246.

Photographer Frank Nowell spent a portion of his career in Nome, Alaska documenting the events after the gold rush of 1900. The photographs here present a picture of the towns and business enterprises as they developed during this early stage of Alaskan history. He also chronicled the local native populations with special focus on Eskimo life and customs.

Born in 1864 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Frank Nowell sought his fortune in Alaska in 1886. Shipping out on the S.S. Ancon, Frank planned to start the first dairy ranch in Alaska. Subsequently, he ventured into the mining business in the vicinity of Juneau and Silver Bow, and eventually joined his father's mining operation on Douglas Island.

280 images have been digitized from the original in the Frank H. Nowell Collection no. 316 in UW Libraries Special Collections.

Series of photographs taken by Henry Mason Sarvant, a pioneer Tacoma civil engineer before the turn of the century and later mayor of Steilacoom. A portion of the collection depicts Mt. Tacoma (Mount Rainier) climbing expeditions and scenes of the vicinity, undertaken by Sarvant and his companions from 1892-1912. During this period he made extensive surveys of this region and also one of the first maps of Mount Rainier.

An additional group of images document his adventures in the Klondike Gold Rush from August 1897 to November 1901. They chronicle his trip up to the Klondike at the beginning of the Gold Rush through Dyea and over the Chilkoot Pass to Dawson. They also document his movements through the gold fields of Bonanza, Eldorado, Hunker, and Adam's Creeks, providing pictorial evidence of mining practices and equipment, towns, camps, cabins, natural terrain, portraits of miners, and in some cases, their families and pets. Additional photographs seem to have been taken on Sarvant's return trip from the gold fields and show natural scenery, Native American dwellings, totem poles, and carvings, the disabled ship Farralon, and the towns of Sitka, Ketchikan, and Wrangle, Alaska.

The original collection resides in UW Libraries Special Collections as the Henry Mason Sarvant Collection no. 35

John Edward Thwaites was employed in Alaska by the federal government as a clerk for the Railway Mail Service during the early part of the 20th century. From 1905 to 1912 he settled into life onboard the wood hulled mailboat S.S. DORA owned by the Northwestern Steamship Company and traveled the route from Valdez to Unalaska delivering mail to the coastal communities. He was also an amateur photographer, who by using a Kodak camera, documented his experiences in Southeastern Alaska. Although not trained as a professional photographer, he quickly took advantage of the burgeoning postcard market selling thousands of photographic postcards depicting Alaska scenes. This collection includes his images of: the aftermath of Aleutian chain volcanic eruptions; maritime disasters including the famous Farallon shipwreck in 1910; Aleutian Natives and Eskimos, including an Aglegmiut shaman in costume depicting what is believed to be the only images of an actual shaman wearing these ceremonial costumes; Alaska industries including fox farming, whaling, codfish salteries, copper mining; glaciers and scenic wonders; and small towns and daily life encountered en route.

The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the John E. Thwaites Photographs Collection no. 247.

Arriving in Seattle in the 1880s, Arthur Churchill Warner engaged in photographing views of Seattle for the tourist trade. These included conventional street scenes, the ships on Elliot Bay, and the mills along the waterfront. In 1888, he joined a Mt. Rainier climbing expedition and was the first to use a camera to record the summiting of the highest peak in Washington State. He had a brief three year stay in Alaska and the Yukon, documenting the Gold Rush of 1898-1900, before returning to the Pacific Northwest to continue his photographic career. His images have left us with a lasting visual impression of the early days of Seattle and its regional history.

The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the Arthur Churchill Warner Collection no. 273.

Seattleites called it the "Exposition Beautiful." In 1909, the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition (referred to as the AYP) was held at fairgrounds on the University of Washington campus, a 250 acre wilderness. Between June 1 and October 16, visitors came from across the United States, Canada, and the Pacific Ocean to experience the majesty of the Northwest and, through the exhibits and sights at the AYP, to learn about culture and commerce in Seattle, Alaska, the Canadian Northwest, and the Pacific Rim.

The Centennial in 2009 gave way to new celebrations and commemorations. http://content.lib.washington.edu/extras/ayp100.html

The curriculum guide consists of a variety of original sources relating the Klondike Gold rush and Seattle along with a set of maps of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.