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• there is a stories from peoples and their adventures then in "Young Klondike," a popular magazine of the period. Each issue of "Young Klondike" was filled with often fanciful stories of the characters and events of the Alaska Gold Rush. The April, 1902, edition contained a story entitled, "My Encounter With Vampires," a first-person account by prospector Josiah Franklin concerning events that transpired in Caribou in the winter of 1901:

  "People started going missing. Every morning, one, two folks was gone. At first we didn't think nothing of it, that's how things was in Caribou. People left. Then one night, Pete Dawson, the owner of the saloon, came running down the street hollering, waking everyone up. He said he'd been attacked by vampires, said he barely got away, and from the looks of him, with his clothes all torn up, he wasn't lying. So about twenty of us got together, waited till the sun came up, then we went looking for them. We checked all over, every building, every miner's camp. Found nothing.

  Young Klondike
  
  Magazine
  
  That night, we drank us some coffee, hid in an alleyway and waited for them. Must have been after midnight when they came in. First there was this one man, a feller I recognized who had a claim out on Spring Creek. He came creeping through, like he was the scout or something. Then the rest of them came out of the shadows without even making a sound. There was five in all. We lit our torches and tried to surround them, but they turned tail and disappeared. Good thing we had dogs, because we would have never been able to catch up with them ourselves.

  We found the dogs outside one of the abandoned mines and from the way they was barking we knew the vampires was in there. Problem was, none of us wanted to go in and finish the job. So we decided to blow up the entrance to the mine and trap them for good. We rigged up some dynamite and blew it up and a whole big bunch of rocks came crashing down around the entrance. I don't reckon a team of elephants could have cleared those rocks away. After that, we went back to the saloon and celebrated. And we never saw no vampires again."

  If Mr. Franklin's account is true, then it might explain what happened to the Army engineers. Trapped in the chill depths of the mine on that night in 1901, the vampires likely were frozen solid. And they probably would have remained that way forever, had the Army engineers not arrived forty years later. In the course of blasting their way through the mountain pass, the engineers apparently opened up the entrance to the mine. As it was summer, the vampires must have been thawed out, after which they awoke, and eventually found their way to the camp.

• Excellent facts. Great pictures to bring it all to life

• David Hartman did a great job of bringing old Yukon back to life!

• I've been to 40 mile chicken eagle tok Taylor hwy dawson city .

• Today the average man cannot just go out and make a living off of gold mining OUR public lands. This is not because there is a shortage of gold, but rather the US and Canadian government has made it so incredibly difficult for the average man to dig for gold. The permits, environmental studies, legal costs, regulations, and bureaucracy is so expensive and difficult to navigate that youll spend tens of thousands of dollars and years before you can even move a single rock! This is proof that the "American dream" is dead!

• Really Brilliant............ R W Service the Ballards... Very well done Thankyou

• Nicely done!

• Outstanding video. Thanks for posting. Remember David Hartman from back in the day. He does such a fine job perfect voice for this kind of documentary.

• Thank you!

• Video made the gold rush come alive