Folks, you see a number of reviews angry or frustrated with the tale because of its inaccuracies. Yes, that is true. I've read Bill Haskell's book, and he did not travel to the Yukon with a guy named Epstein. First Haskell went to Chicago and could not find good work. That's when he found himself in Colorado looking for some mining prospects. He traveled from Colorado with Joe Meeker after they met working some gold fields there. The entire story about how Bill Haskell met Joe Meeker in Dawson is pure fantasy. The gambling Epstein story is completely fabricated by writers. Bill Haskell was educated in a Massachusetts Academy from age 15 off the Vermont farm (sent by his farming father with high aspirations). After this, he denied college and Haskell worked in a Boston dry goods store. He was bored and wanted to travel west. He made it to Colorado and overheard some guys talking at a table in a restaurant. He inquired and they offered to sell him claims in a Colorado creek area. He couldn't afford a claim, but went to find those fields and met Joe Meeker there. The idea they travel to the Yukon was Joe Meeker's, not Bill's. Bill had $800 dollars saved up and between them, about $1700 total. Joe Meeker had been to the Yukon before. These were tough men, who put together a provision of 3500 lbs in San Francisco, and then traveled to Alaska, walking and surviving in brutal conditions. Bill Haskell got to Dawson before it was Dawson and he was good friends with Joe Ladue who developed the town. Bill Haskell worked for a cabin builder in Circle City for a while, after he split from Joe Meeker who stayed behind to mine in (if memory serves me right) Circle City. Haskell rode (worked on) a steamer up into the arctic circle and wrote about Eskimo hunters and other interesting sights he behold while up there. Once Bill Haskell got to Dawson, he worked in the lumber mill, built a cabin, and staked a claim on the creek...after Claim #60 down (stream) and stayed there through the winter because of all the stories he was hearing about gold finds up there. He had the claim, but wasn't convinced there was gold and had figured it was all bloated stories of fortune. The first summer and fall 1896, Haskell was actually in the "wood business" in Dawson. Joe joined him later, but Bill had another partner at the claim through the winter and it wasn't Joe Meeker, it was Joe Ladue. Haskell and his lumber yard/real estate selling partner made it rich off that claim. Before they got rich, he spent his days baking bread and helping with the claim. It wasn't until later in the summer, that they hit pay dirt. They kept those $40,000 coffee cans full of gold quiet and then they left town and went home after two years in the Klondike. Most of the gold collected up there by the miners was housed in a warehouse through the winter and went out with the steamboats in the summer months. Belinda actually married the "count", who is depicted in Klondike as an English bad guy. He was actually French and was a barber who claimed fame and royalty once he made it to Dawson. Belinda lost her first fortune to him and divorced after traveling to Paris. The divorce didn't happen until 1906, after he had kidnapped one of her kin and a bunch of lawsuits ensued over assets. She eventually made another fortune in the banking business, retired, and moved to Yakima. She died in a nursing home in Seattle in 1967 at 95 years old. She had sold her orchard and mansion in Yakima when her fortune ran out. SHE's the one with the Orchard, not Bill Haskell. Bill was noted in the Dawson town log in 1901 after he had returned, and was never heard from again. That part is true. And another truth is Joe Meeker falling through the ice and drifting down a fast river, ever recovered. Bill had left the Yukon after Joe Meeker's death. Haskell made a fortune in his claim after the brutal first Dawson winter. The Indians we saw in the miniseries was just nonsense dreamed up by the writers again. Most of the Indians either worked as pack/guides or did nothing at all, but survive. Anyway... we will never know the full story, but it was indeed fun to watch Klondike with all its Hollywood B.S. But what do you expect? The real story is so complicated and filled with real brutal harsh life, that the normal soft American audience wouldn't watch it. For what Klondike is, (a nice western), I enjoyed watching and really liked the music. I think if the writers did some real research on Bill Haskell's stories and accounts of his time in the Klondike, they could have come up with something really neat. As a published fiction author myself, I'm considering such a story.
Review of Klondike
