Customer Reviews

Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush: Secret History of the Far North

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Lael Morgan does a great job of piecing together old newspaper articles and photos to recreate the lives of these adventurous pioneers. The stories from Dawson are especially detailed (due to the resources) and give you the feeling that you know what it was like to live and work in Dawson during the gold rush. Knowing that the characters in the book were real make the stories that much more compelling.

I bought this book at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks bookstore. My dad, Class of '51 at UAF (we were there for his 50th reunion), had told me some stories about "The Line" and he had had his first job with the gold mining operations, so I was curious. There's not a lot of gory detail here. It's about people and places, but it's quite a colorful history. Though never officially legal, prostitution was tolerated and it flourished in Alaska for more than 50 years. And some very famous characters pop up, like Wyatt Earp and the "Birdman of Alcatraz". Definitely worth the time.

The Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, a time at the turn of the century, when the gold camps were booming and the dust flowed like wine. Leaving behind law and many of the constraints of the Post-Victorian era, men and women went north to find adventure and wealth. Most found death among the cold frozen mountains and rivers but a few survived to find money, power and, sometimes, even love.
The women found it easier to mine the miners then to mine the mines. Women couldn't work claims in most cases and most of the normal jobs didn't pay well.
If a woman wanted the wealth and adventure she was searching for she ended up becoming a Good Time Girl. Men outnumbered women ten to one and were always willing to pay for the company. Dance hall girls and prostitutes were among the pioneers who opened the new regions, became rich entrepreneurs and powerful women who, in some cases, changed the towns for the better.
But their history cannot be written in a vacuum. As many of them left behind no written records we have to use police logs, old photos and stories left behind by the more respectable women and men of the cities. The book deals with the conditions and events that made the Far North so much different from the lower forty-eight states where many of the women came from. Why did the cities, in many cases, allow a red light district? Why did they give them police protection? How did the women influence the towns and change the very future of the frontier? Why did so many women turn to be Good Time Girls?
With tons of humor, happy endings and sad ones, the chapters within this book give a detailed look at the history of the independent women who faced hardships, lost fortunes and the dangers of a wild land to find a future.

Well, the men mined the gold, and the women mined the miners. All had unhealthy jobs but it would appear that more womem made money than the men from this book. It is also interesting that many of the women ended their trade by marrying the miners. So while to some they were "soiled doves" to the miners they were princesses.

Still interesting that the town tollerated this business until very recently. An enjoyable read.

This it not the type of book I typically read. But while in Skagway on a second cruise to Alaska this summer, I skimmed this book in a bookstore but did not purchase it there. I continued to think about it, so I ordered it from Amazon.com. I am not studying anthropology nor am I an avid reader of books related to historical things, so this was a "one of a kind" read for me; and an interesting one at that. However, I agree with another reviewer that the book, while well researched, was not well organized. Except for a few chapters devoted to specific women, there was considerable lack of organization and I especially found chronology confusing. But, it in addition to stories about the women in the trade, it has enlightening segments about men everyone has heard of - Al Cody and Wyatt Earp - who spent some time in Alaska. I even learned about the "Birdman of Alcataz". Interesting comparisons are made of the various gold rush "camps", the extent to which the "good time girls" were accepted in these camps and what happened to some of these women later in life. Other than an occasional mention about the two common SIDs (sexually transmitted diseases) of that era, not much is mentioned about the other health-related issues the women faced other than tuberculosis, pneumonia or plagues. For example, I don't recall any mention of pregnancies and struggles with raising children while in the trade; perhaps there was no information available on these issues.

I had to read this for a book club and didn't make it all the way through. I will give credit for a well researched book. It is a history of endless short accounts of the miners and the women who serviced them. While there are a few interesting characters, the information was limited and left you wanting to know more of the story.

This will be of interest of someone who studies the history or who has visited Alaska and seen the locales of the stories to make a connection.

The author has written a generally interesting and informative book. However, there are some inaccuracies. For example, she says that "Klondike" is a mispronunciation of the native name for the Yukon River. Actually, it's the misprounuciation of the name of the Klondike River. In addition, some of the stories are incomplete, e.g. there's a description of a young pregnant woman. It goes on to say she died, but fails to say whether she had the child or not, or what became of it. There are several instances of this kind of omission.

I bought this book because of the uniformly rave reviews and its place on "best" lists for 1998. Unfortunately, I must disagree. I started reading the book two months ago and put it down until last night, when I put it down for good. I was lost and confused among a series of miners and "good time girls." The author failed to add enough detail about their background and character, so it was not much more than a list of names along with their accumulated wealth and marriage partners.

This is a fascinating account of the lives of Alaska's "good-time girls" how they were generally accepted and highly valued by the communities they lived in, and how their lives turned out. Some used their earnings in the trade to become entrepreneurs, some married well, and the lives of some had unhappy endings. There are abundant photographs of the women, which are interesting to compare with the narrative of their lives. Lael Morgan recounts it all honestly and entertainingly, without imposing any judgment or romantic embellishment. The book also provides an account of the growth and development of Fairbanks, Nome, Ketchikan, the boom-and-bust towns of Dawson, Skagway and Dyea, and how the good-time girls were integrated into daily life. When zealous prosecutors occasionally tried to bring them into court, no one in town would testify against them. A rare and remarkable social history.

My husband loved and learned about the girls and there ways. Interesting book and great to read. You will enjoy this book.