George Washington Carmack

Reportedly started the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 after spotting a gold nugget while fishing. George Carmack, whose father was a Forty-Niner, was born on September 24, 1860, in Contra Costa County, California. An orphan since age 11, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served on the USS Wachusetts in 1882, but deserted the military later that same year. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to the Alaska Territory to fish, trap, and trade. Although he wasn't a serious miner, Carmack would occasionally swirl a bit of river sand in his prospector's pan. And he did find a coal deposit near what later became his namesake, the town of Carmacks, Yukon. Not well liked by the miners, however, Carmack became known as "Lyin' George," because of his propensity to exaggerate. His close associations with the native people, as well as his common-law marriage to a Tagish First Nation woman called Kate, also earned him the nickname, "Squaw Man." In August 1896, Carmack and two friends, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley, were salmon fishing at the mouth of the Klondike River when a prospector named Robert Henderson came by. He had been mining gold on the Indian River just south of the Klondike and suggested they try fishing in Rabbit Creek. Whether he was trying to be helpful or simply wanted to prospect the area in which they were fishing is unknown, but they took his advice. On the evening of August 16, 1898, after setting up camp along the Rabbit, Carmack is said to have spotted a thumb-sized nugget of gold jutting out from the creek bank. It is also reported, however, that Carmack was napping when one of his companions found the nugget while washing a dishpan in the creek.

Either way, the find sparked our nation's massive Klondike Gold Rush, where gold deposits were later said to be "lying thick between the flakey slabs of rock like cheese in a sandwich." Rabbit Creek was later renamed Bonanza Creek, for obvious reason. Carmack's gold claim amounted to a reported million dollars.