Secrets of Shadow Creek

Chapter eight / The Grey Moon

     The Klondike Gold Rush also known as The Alaskan Gold Rush or the Yukon Gold Rush caused around 100,000 prospectors to begin the journey to the Klondike region of the Yukon in Northwestern Canada between 1897 and 1899.

     They were all hoping to find their fortunes since gold was discovered in large quantities in the Klondike on August 16, 1896. When news of this reached Seattle and San Francisco in July 1897 it triggered a stampede of those would be prospectors to the gold creeks. The journey was hard and involved traveling long distances and crossing difficult mountain passes. They also had to frequently carry heavy loads. Of those 100,000 would be prospectors, only 30,000 to 40,000 actually arrived to their destination. Some discovered very rich deposits and became immensely wealthy. However, the majority arrived after the best of the gold fields had already been claimed. Only around 4,000 miners ultimately struck gold.

     Among those 4,000 was a young man named Robert Grey. Like the majority of other miners he landed at the ports of Dye and Skagway in South-east Alaska. He then took the White Pass trail to the Yukon River. Then from there, he sailed downstream to the Klondike in a self-made boat. The permafrost made digging and working in the area difficult. Dawson City was founded in the Klondike at the heart of the gold creeks. From a population of only 500 in 1896, the hastily constructed wooden town housed around 30,000 people by the spring of 1898. It was poorly built and isolated on a mud flat. Dawson City had poor sanitary standards and suffered from epidemics and fires.

     Even though the young Robert Grey did hit it big and became very wealthy, before he left the region with his fortune, he became gravely ill. If it were not for some of the native Han people, he would have surely died. The natives lived along the Klondike before the discovery of gold and they suffered extensively during the rush. However Robert Grey fell in love with one of the Han women. He was very good to her people and shared his wealth with them. When he became gravely ill, it is said that they healed him by making a concoction made with various ingredients including of all things, wolves blood. Once he had totally recovered, he left the region with his fortune and he took his beautiful Han bride with him. By the time he arrived back in his home in America he knew that something about him had been changed forever. He began having strange dreams. In his dreams, he was always hunting in the woods, but he was not a man any longer. He was a wolf. Before too long, he realized that he also had an extreme increase in his senses of smell and hearing. He also became aware of the fact that he was becoming increasingly stronger physically. His strength had become way greater than the normal average man. His vision had become extremely accurate even in the darkness. He could not begin to understand what had caused all of these changes that he seemed to be experiencing. When he told his wife of his changes, she told him stories about how some of her people had experienced the same type of things after being cured with the “wolves’ blood potions”.

     She told him that in some cases their animal instincts also became so intense and out of control that the other natives would eventually have to end the lives of some of those who had experienced “the great change” just to protect the rest of the their people. Robert Grey did not want to become a danger to anyone, so he decided to keep traveling with his wife until they found a place where they could settle down without worrying about anyone learning of his “changes” and without endangering anyone.

     In 1901 they found a small town hidden in a secluded mountain region. It was called Shadow Creek. They decided that it would be the perfect place for them to settle down. Since they were extremely wealthy, and were able to explain to the local leaders how they just wanted to live in peace away from crowded populations, they were allowed to settle in Shadow Creek. Robert built them a home that was simple for such a wealthy man, but it was the exact type of home that his beloved wife had longed for. Despite his secret, they lived very happily together in Shadow Creek.