Fairbanks
On December 28, 1902, Wada drove one of Barnette's dog teams into Dawson City to tell the Canadians about the recent gold strikes near Fairbanks. Reporter Casey Moran of the Yukon Sun subsequently wrote a front-page story whose headline screamed "Rich Strike Made in the Tanana." The story caused several hundred miners to leave Dawson City for Fairbanks, where most were disappointed to find that prices were high and the best sites were already staked. An angry mob approached Barnette's store, and threatened violence against both Barnette and Wada. Nonetheless, said Wada in September 1907:
| “ | The story that I was about to be hanged for causing a thought-to-be-fake stampede was not correct. The fact is that the miners held a meeting to decide as to the price of flour then being offered by one of the trading companies. They thought the price exorbitant. It was rumored that the miners had a rope on my neck, and were about to hoist me. Now that is not true. The other part of the story, that I showed a copy of the Post-Intelligencer saying that several years before I had rescued a party of shipwrecked whalers in the Arctic in dead of winter is true. I did show that paper to let some of the boys know I had been up North, but it was not in a plea to save my neck. | ” |
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