Reading Klondike Women on a Lazy Sunday Morning

Early this Sunday morning my second youngest boy woke up at 5:50 am and refused to go back to sleep and is now watching YouTube toy videos (don’t judge me!) in my office as to not disturb the rest of the sleeping family. While watching him I had the time to pick up my copy of Klondike Women, a great book by Melanie J. Mayer about the women that also heard the call of the gold rush and made their way to Alaska and the Yukon. It heavily features interviews of my great grandmother Edith Feero Larson. I highly recommend the book.

One of the parts of Klondike Women that talk about the Feeros.

Anyway, I’m rereading the section talking about how the family made their way from Tacoma to Skagway and it talks about the steamers that transported prospective gold rushers north. After her father John made his way north, he soon made enough money to send for the rest of the family. Great grandma Edith, her siblings, and mother made the journey on the steamer Al-Ki. Amazingly, it was relatively easy to find a picture of this steamer. The picture shows it docked at Skagway (probably). The book, through the accounts of Edith and other women, gives you a great idea of how hard the journey was and the life that was waiting for them up north.

Al-Ki docked in Skagway. Photo credit