CANADA.
Photographic History / Documentary.
All the great 19th century North American gold rush events occurred within a similar frame: a few intrepid, innovative, or just plain lucky souls discover a major gold vein, there is a huge rush of enterprising risk-takers and an even larger substrate of the naive get-rich-quick types susceptible to utopian advertising and cons—plus those who would do the conniving. These frontier points were swarmed by a tsunami of all of the above, with camps of the adventurous swelling overnight into semi-lawless town-like hubs. Out of this would then gel something like a functioning municipality, eventually electing sheriffs, mayors, and judges (who may or may not be on the up). They would attract hoteliers and saloon-keepers, newsmen and the brothels, as well as whole families and the church-going. If lucky (for posterity’s sake), they would also attract photographers. The farther west that these strikes occurred, it seemed the more hearty those required to take them on. And Klondike (just south of today’s Dawson City) in the Yukon Territory of western Canada was the farthest west of them all—the last great frontier gold strike on the continent. Indeed, this gold rush would attract the list mentioned above; but luckily it also brought forth the Kinsey brothers, Clarence and Clarke (Clarence also attracted by the actual gold in the ground). Researched by Norm Bolotin in the 1970s and published by The Alaska Geographic Society in 1980, this wonderful book of photographs holds witness to the boom and bust of the central hub of the Klondike Gold Rush, Grand Forks, as told through the lenses and glass plate negatives of the Kinsey brothers. Paying particular attention to the rapid construction of both the town and the mining industry, as well as those brave souls who ventured to this forbidding far-flung place, these frames trace a decade of extraordinary ups and downs. At its peak in the first few years of the 1900s, over 10,000 residents had landed in Grand Forks, holding holiday celebrations and parades, all with the hopes of striking it rich. But by the end of that decade, almost all but the most intrepid were gone. Such would be the same for a fascinating chapter in continental frontier history but for the works of Clarence and Clarke Kinsey, whose images of a town now lost to time (few structures or even the ruins of structures still exist at the site of Grand Forks) are preserved here, ethereal if once a very real place. [Condition: At 40+ years old, this horizontal-layout softcover is in good shape. There is the normal shelf-wear and creasing on its spine edges, with both front and back covers having been bent at one point. The interior pages are in excellent shape.]
Condition: Used Good.
Nonfiction / History.
Norm Bolotin.
The Alaska Geographic Society, 1980.
Oversized Softcover, 128 pgs, 11 x 8" / 1 lb
