Klondike Gold Rush
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50 free Klondike Gold Rush trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Klondike Gold Rush lasted barely three years, yet it left behind more tall tales than almost any other event of its century. News of a strike on a remote Yukon creek in 1896 sent clerks, farmers and shopkeepers scrambling north over frozen mountain trails, most of them with no idea how to mine. This quiz collects the best fun facts about the Klondike Gold Rush: how the gold was found and who really found it, the punishing journey to the diggings, what things cost in a boomtown at the edge of the Arctic, the con men, dance-hall stars and lawmen who made Dawson City and Skagway famous, and the books, poems and pictures the stampede inspired. It suits history buffs, teachers planning a lesson on the gold rush and anyone who enjoys a good frontier story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the surprising details even on the questions you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Canadian authorities make every Klondike stampeder bring before crossing into the Yukon?
A year's supply of food
A year's supply of food, about 1,150 pounds of it, was demanded so that nobody would starve. With tents and tools added, each person hauled close to a ton.
Q 02Which US president's grandfather got rich running a restaurant and hotel for Klondike stampeders?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump's grandfather Friedrich never dug for gold: he opened the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel on the trail in 1898 and earned his stake from the men heading north.
Q 03Which silent star eats his own shoe in a 1925 comedy inspired by Klondike stampede photographs?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin built The Gold Rush around photographs of the Klondike stampede and the story of the snowbound Donner Party. He said it was the film he wanted to be remembered by.
Q 04Which Disney comics tycoon strikes it rich in the Klondike in his own life story?
Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck reaches the Klondike in Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. A running joke has him boring his nephews with tales of his prospecting days.
Q 05Which luxury did Swiftwater Bill allegedly buy up across Dawson City to spite a woman he loved?
Eggs
Eggs were a costly luxury in Dawson City, so the gambler allegedly bought every one in town, had them boiled and fed them to dogs. She adored them and had dined with another man.
Q 06Which kitchen staple became worth its weight in gold in Dawson City in the hungry winter of 1897?
Salt
Salt ran so short once the rivers froze that it matched gold ounce for ounce. Nails for building reached $28 a pound that same winter.
Q 07Which department store chain began as a shoe shop funded by its founder's $13,000 Klondike windfall?
Nordstrom
Nordstrom began in 1901 as Wallin & Nordstrom, a shoe store John Nordstrom opened after selling his disputed claim. He first read about the strike while working at a sawmill.
Q 08Dawson City dance-hall star Gertie Lovejoy wore which gem fixed between her two front teeth?
A diamond
A diamond in her smile made her Diamond Tooth Gertie. Canada's oldest casino, opened in Dawson City in 1971, carries her name and stages a vaudeville show inspired by her.
Q 09Since 1973, a Dawson City hotel bar has served a cocktail holding which preserved human body part?
A toe
A toe sits in every Sourtoe Cocktail, and drinkers join the club only if their lips touch it. Swallowing it brings a $2,500 fine.
Q 10Which US city's mayor resigned in 1897 to join the Klondike rush, as did twelve of its policemen?
Seattle
Seattle lost Mayor William Wood, who quit to start a company shipping gold-seekers north. Many of the city's streetcar drivers walked off the job too.
Q 11Which future novelist joined the Klondike rush at 21 and later set the story To Build a Fire there?
Jack London
Jack London earned more by working for other prospectors than by digging, but the Klondike became the setting for some of his first successful stories. Illness there cost him four front teeth.
Q 12Which pack animals died in such numbers on the 1897 trail from Skagway that it was named after them?
Horses
Horses died in huge numbers on paths as narrow as two feet, and the route became Dead Horse Trail. By late 1897 it was closed, leaving about 5,000 people stuck in Skagway.
Q 13Which crime boss of gold-rush Skagway ran a fake telegraph office whose wires ended at the wall?
Soapy Smith
Q 21Which prospector filed the Klondike strike's first claim, a find many credit to his brother-in-law?
George Carmack
George Carmack took the finder's double claim because the party feared officials would not recognise an Indigenous claimant. Historians usually credit Skookum Jim, his Tagish brother-in-law.
Q 22Rabbit Creek, site of the Klondike strike of August 1896, was renamed which creek by its miners?
Bonanza
Bonanza was the miners' tribute to the millions of dollars found along the stream, and every foot of it was staked by the end of that month. Half of all Klondike gold has come from it.
Q 23Which Bard of the Yukon wrote The Cremation of Sam McGee yet never joined the Klondike rush?
Robert Service
Soapy Smith charged stampeders to send messages that never left the building. Vigilantes turned on him, and he died in a shootout on Juneau Wharf in July 1898.
Q 14The Klondike rush ended when prospectors left Dawson City for beach gold at which Alaskan town?
Nome
Nome pulled the stampede away from Dawson City: its gold lay in the beach sand, where anyone could dig without staking a claim.
Q 15Klondike old-timers were nicknamed after which staple of the prospector's camp kitchen?
Sourdough
Sourdough starter worked where yeast and baking soda failed in the cold, so old hands prized it and took its name. The word outlived the rush as a label for any northern old-timer.
Q 16In the 1903 Klondike novel The Call of the Wild, which dog is stolen from a California ranch?
Buck
Buck, a 140-pound St Bernard cross, was modelled on a real dog the author met at Dawson City. In the story he is sold north to pull a sled.
Q 17Which vegetable has a popular variety, bred in Ontario, named for the Klondike rush and its river?
Potato
Potato breeder Gary Johnston developed Yukon Gold at Guelph in the 1960s, crossing in a yellow-fleshed Peruvian variety. Its early name was simply Yukon.
Q 18Which war, declared in April 1898, pushed the Klondike stampede off newspaper front pages?
Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War took over the headlines in spring 1898. The public soured so fast that telling someone to go to the Klondike became a popular insult.
Q 19Which natural disaster killed more than 60 stampeders on the Chilkoot Trail on April 3, 1898?
An avalanche
An avalanche of wet, heavy snow swept down on the climbers after storms loaded the slopes. Slides were a constant threat on the route to the summit.
Q 20Roughly how many people set out for the Klondike, though fewer than half ever reached Dawson City?
100,000
100,000 is the usual estimate of those who set out, yet only 30,000 to 40,000 arrived. Of those, no more than about 4,000 struck gold.
Robert Service was a bank clerk posted north in 1904, and he first saw Dawson City in 1908, ten years after the stampede. His verse sold so well that he quit the bank to write.
Q 24What did workers carve into the ice below the Chilkoot summit, then charge climbers a fee to use?
A staircase
A staircase of 1,500 steps, nicknamed the Golden Steps or Golden Stairs, ran up the last slope. It was so narrow that climbers went up in one long single file.
Q 25What obstacle did Klondike miners overcome by lighting wood fires at the bottom of their shafts?
Permafrost
Permafrost lay only about six feet down, so miners thawed it roughly 14 inches at a time with fires and dug out the gravel. The frozen walls could stand without timber supports.
Q 26Dawson City's worst blaze destroyed 117 buildings in April 1899 while which group was on strike?
Firefighters
Firefighters of the newly formed brigade had walked out, and a saloon blaze spread unchecked. Damage was put at more than $1 million.
Q 27Which disease did English prospectors in the Klondike nickname Canadian black leg?
Scurvy
Scurvy struck in winter, when fresh produce could not reach the camps and miners went without vitamin C. Untreated, it could kill.
Q 28What punishment could Mounties give anyone caught working on a Sunday in gold-rush Dawson City?
Chopping firewood
Chopping firewood for the police post was a penalty under Dawson City's strict Sunday laws, which also shut every saloon at midnight on Saturday.
Q 29Which city replaced Dawson City as Yukon's capital after the Alaska Highway passed it by?
Whitehorse
Whitehorse sat on the new highway, 518 kilometres to the south, and became the hub that Dawson City could no longer be. It had begun as a campground for stampeders.
Q 30Which Mountie, who thought Skagway the roughest place in the world, commanded Dawson City in 1898?
Sam Steele
Sam Steele ran the force from mid-1898, a year that ended without a single murder in Dawson City. His men's conduct made the Mounties famous around the world.