The Last Great Gold Rush

When news of the gold discovery in Red Lake reached the outside world in March 1926, hundreds of journalists from across North America travelled to the area to see what the excitement was all about.  We have reproduced excerpts from Popular Mechanics to give you an idea of the type of articles written at the time, and to show the enthusiasm generated by the find.

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With airplanes roaring overhead and dog teams mushing across frozen lakes below, the wildest stampede since the Klondike days is drawing hundreds of adventurous prospectors into the wilds of Northern Ontario.  Spurred by reports of a rich strike on Red Lake, 130 miles northwest of Hudson, the nearest railroad station, adventurers from all parts of Canada and the United States are flocking to the scene.    News spread fast even in the bush.  Prospectors are pouring in by the hundreds and the shores of Red Lake are staked as far as the eye can see.     Those who come in by plane are faring better than the hundreds who are mushing in on foot.  Sleds are pulled by hand, some are tramping in with packs on their back, and others are hitching horses to toboggans and sleighs.    The Gasoline Husky, replacing several teams and hauling a long train of heavily loaded sledges, promises to revolutionize travel over the deep snow of the frozen north.    To the little poplar trees that stud the shore, dogs are chained, prick-eared huskies, collie curs, nondescript mongrels of intricate ancestry, fish eaters and self scratchers.  They fill the air with a doleful sound, the collies yelping shrilly, the huskies unable to bark, rousing the echoes with that wailing ululation that resembles the cry of neither dog nor wolf.    The trail leads across frozen lakes and rivers through a virgin wilderness inhabited only by an occasional white or Indian trapper.

Dome crew on Howey claims, Red Lake, July 1926. Unloading Curtiss Canucks at Sioux Lookout. Howey Mines gasoline Husky, winter 1926. Prospector Conrad Hanson, 1926. Curtiss Canuck leaving Red Lake, 1926.