The Call of The Wild - Background

Background

California native Jack London had traveled around the United States as a hobo, returned to California where he finished high school (he dropped out at age 14), and then studied at Berkeley for a year when, in 1897, he went to Alaska at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush, saying, "It was in the Klondike I found myself". He lived there for almost a year, leaving California in July and traveling to Dyea. From there he went inland to the Stewart River where he and his companions staked claims to eight gold mines. To get inland, they transported their gear over the Chilkoot Pass, carrying on their backs loads of up to 100 pounds, depending on the conditions.

He lived for a time in the frontier town Dawson City before moving to a nearby winter camp where, among other things, he spent the winter with the reading material he brought: Darwin's The Origin of the Species and John Milton's Paradise Lost. In the winter of 1898 Dawson City (now mostly deserted) was a city with about 30,000 miners, a saloon, an opera house and a street of brothels.

In the spring of 1898, as the annual gold stampeders began to stream into the area, London left. He had contracted scurvy, common in the Arctic north winters where fresh produce was unavailable, and when his gums began to swell he decided to return to California. With his companions he rafted 2,000 miles down the Yukon River, through portions of the wildest territory in the region, until they reached St. Michael where he hired himself out on a boat and returned to San Francisco.

It was in Alaska that he found material to inspire him to write the novella Call of the Wild. The previous summer Dyea Beach had been the primary point of arrival for miners, but without a harbor its access was treacherous and soon Skagway became the point of arrival. From Skagway, the Klondike was reached by the White Pass; too steep and harsh for horses it became known as "Dead Horse Pass" for the many horse carcasses that littered the route. Instead of horses, dogs were used to transport material over the pass. During the Klondike Gold Rush strong dogs with thick fur were "much desired, scarce and high in price".

London would have seen many dogs, especially prized husky sled-dogs, in Dawson city and in the adjacent winter camps, close to the main sled route. London became friends with Marshall Latham Bond, who owned a mixed St. Bernard-Scotch Collie dog, and London would later admit in a letter to him, "Yes, Buck is based on your dog at Dawson." Beinecke Library at Yale University holds a photograph of Bond's dog, taken during his stay in the Klondike in 1897. The depiction of the California ranch in the beginning of the story was based on the Bond family ranch.