Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush

Lael Morgan

Jan 1999 · Epicenter Press

About this ebook

Morgan offers an authentic and deliciously humorous account of the prostitutes and other "disreputable" women who were the earliest female pioneers of the Far North. At the turn of the century, tens of thousands of Americans left their homes, escaping a worldwide depression & the restraints of the Victorian Era, to stampede to Alaska & the Yukon, where millions of dollars in gold was being discovered in remote, subartic mining camps. Women accompanied the men on the long journey to the Far North--more often prostitutes, dance hall girls & entertainers than respectful wives & schoolteachers. These are the girls of the demimonde, that "half world" of disreputable women who lived on the outskirts of society. Meet "Dutch Kate" Wilson, who pioneered many areas long before the "respectable" women who received credit for getting there first; ruthless heartbreakers Cad Wilson & Rose Blumkin; "French Marie" Larose, who auctioned herself off as a wife to the highest bidder; & Edith Neile, called the "Oregon Mare," famous for both her outlandish behavior & her soft-hearted generosity. These "good time girls" crossed geographic & social frontiers, finding freedom, independence, hardship, heartbreak & sometimes astonishing wealth. They were an important part of this key chapter in the history of the West, which holds a special place in the American imagination.

About the author

Lael Morgan was born in rural Maine and has lived more than half her life in the wilds. She started her writing career as a reporter for the Malden Press in Massachusetts. Later she became a photojournalist at the Juneau Empire in Alaska's capitol city, and then covered crime, politics and the old red light district for the Fairbanks News Miner just south of the Arctic Circle.In 1968, Morgan began a five year stint at the Los Angeles Times, and then returned to the Far North for assignments with National Geographic, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and Alaska Magazine.In 1988 she joined the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she taught writing, photography and multimedia for 12 years. In 1999 she became managing editor and later publisher of the Casco Bay Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Portland, Maine. Then, motivated by a low threshold of boredom, she moved south to Arlington, Texas, where she went to work for the Department of Communication, University of Texas Arlington.Morgan has authored more than a dozen books, including Good Time Girls of the Alaska Yukon Gold Rush which in 1998 won her the title of Historian of the Year from the Alaska Historical Society. Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock, a book she wrote in 1988, was recently included in a listing state's best nonfiction books, and has been republished by University of Alaska Press.