Michael Ambrose Mahoney "Klondike Mike"

Michael Ambrose Mahoney "Klondike Mike" was considered the Paul Bunyan character hero of Quebec Canada and the Alaskan Klondike.

Master dog sled musher and boxer, Klondike Mike Mahoney, was a great Irish legend of the arctic frontier! To Klondike Mike, Chilkoot pass was nothing more than a good place to carry a piano, while White Horse rapids was a swimming hole suitable for toddlers. Authors like Jack London and poet Robert Service, who defined adventure with their pens credited Klondike Mike's heroic exploits of daring and ability to survive as the foundation for Gold Rush lore. Klondike Mike conquered the Yukon from the back of his dog sled, setting records, as he once covered 400 miles of frozen tundra in a mere 24 days despite being pursued by a ferocious pack of snarling wolves. Klondike Mike once carried a piano on his back 33 miles up the famous Chilkoot pass, which had a famously steep elevation climb of over 2000 vertical feet and took a man 5 days to ascend. Horses could not make the climb and many men died in the ascent, but Mahoney managed to carry a piano up to the top.

Descriptions and tales found in the book, Call of the Wild by Jack London and the poetry of Robert Service were drawn from the real life experiences of Mike Mahoney, who was a true American folk hero of Alaska as well as Quebec Canada where he was born. Today, giant statues of Klondike Mike, sliver spoons, and postcards with his bigger-than-life image is used to symbolize Alaska.

The folk song, Klondike Mike written and sung by Hal Wills mentions some of Mahoney's legendary exploits.

Time Magazine featured an article about Mike Mahoney in their July 19, 1948 issue (featuring Howard Hughes on the cover).

A book was written about his exploits, called Klondike Mike: An Alaskan Odyssey by Merrill Denison.

Marvel Comics portrayed Klondike Mike as a WW2 hero defeating a Japanese invasion of Alaska in the Captain Marvel story, Alaskan Adventure published in their October 1942 issue.

Many of the famous wilderness stories found in the books of Jack London (Call of the Wild and White Fang), Robert Service (Under the Spell of the Yukon) and Rex Beach are credited as drawn from the personal experiences of Mike Mahoney.

After all, for example, since Jack London was not a dog sled musher, how would the writer know about dog sled sagas unless Jack London heard real stories about dog sleds mushing from actual mushers like Klondike Mike, the most famous musher of all who had personally blazed the dog sled trail into the Yukon and then brought more gold out of the Yukon than any other musher.

The movie, City of Gold made in 1957 tells the true life story in documentary form of the gold town Dawson City where Mike reigned as a local legend. The movie won the prestigious, Palme d'Or award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival in France and was nominated for an Academy Award.

When Klondike Mike was a young man, he became the master dog fled frontiersman of the Klondike gold rush who was paid hefty sums to carry the biggest loads of gold out of the Yukon. His legendary strength, stamina, arctic survivability, skill with sled dogs, and his reputation as a boxer with his defeat of the world's heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns, made Mike Mahoney the go-to guy men trusted who could protect large loads of gold hauled out of the Yukon. Mike earned $2500 in gold (a huge sum in 1900) by enduring one 2 week dog sled trek carrying a huge load of gold for a successful miner. The largest load of gold ever brought to Seattle from the Yukon was the personal fortune of Mike Mahoney, who lived off of his gold earnings for the remainder of his life.

Mike was often the man of action they described. His extraordinary feats of strength, endurance and character provided much of the factual material upon which these writers based their tales, and Mike gradually became associated in the public mind with Dan McGraw, the fictitious character created by Robert Service, whose exploits and character were based on the real Mike Mahoney.

Although some stories were gradually embellished in retelling, many stories were told of his legendary exploits in newspapers of his era and he became a symbol of the time.

(Source: http://www.hougengroup.com/yukonhistory/nuggets_year/2000s.aspx?nug...)

Mike Mahoney was a red-headed 210 pound, long-legged, six-foot-two man who was known for incredible strength, his fearsome boxing, and uncommon endurance for the Canadian wilderness during the Klondike Yukon Gold Rush. Thousands of men rushed to the Yukon, where some men became millionaires, while others died in the exceedingly harsh conditions. Mike survived the wilderness even as many hundreds of men died of pneumonia, freezing temperatures, bears, wolves, falls, fights, natural events, or mining accidents.

Fighting Iris:

Mike was taught Irish step dancing, characterized by incredible high kicks, by his father who dedicated a room at his farm to practicing, which family members dubbed the "ballet studio." The early practice of kicking accurately, allowed Mahoney to make effective use of kicking as a fighter. Upon arriving in the Yukon, Mike earned his first cash when fights were set-up for him. These early fights won Mahoney the immediate respect of the men of the Yukon, and won money for those who bet on him to win. When the Canadian boxing champion came to town and asked if there was anyone he might fight, the immediate answer was, "Why Mike Mahoney! Of course!" As his reputation as a fighter grew, there were men who were afraid to fight him, not wanting to be hurt.

Mike Mahoney became a boxing champion in Michigan, Alaska, and Canada. In 1892 Mike won the state heavyweight boxing championship title in Michigan. He moved to Seattle where the first ship laden with two tons of gold arrived from the Yukon firing-up the Yukon Gold Rush. He worked on board ship to pay for his passage to the Yukon and then in Dawson City, took on any bet to fight anyone, establishing his reputation as a fearsome fighter. In the Yukon and Nome Alaska, fights were then set-up for Mike by top boxing promoter Tex Rickard.

Mike would announce to his opponents he would fight "lumberjack style" which meant fighting by punching with both fist and kicks. His kicks gave Mike a devastating advantage. Mike Mahoney defeated the Canadian champion in a match, as told in the biography, "Tommy Burns: Canada's Unknown World Heavyweight Champion written by Dan McCaffery.

Dog Sled Expert

Mike quickly became the man trusted by successful gold miners to sledge their gold bullion the 600 miles from the Yukon to the Pacific. He bought a pack of husky sled dogs and trained with them to follow his commands to pull a laden sledge across the Iditarod during the winter. Mike's stories were fuel for the books of Jack London.

Even without running the dogs hundreds of miles in the dead of the Yukon winter, he was impressive in strength of character, body and determination. One summer, Mike backpacked a piano on his back into the Yukon so those at the gold frontier could enjoy music.

He became a national heroic figure when he carried the body and coffin of a deceased wilderness judge as well as gold, news and personal mail from the men. He sledged alone with the judge's coffin and gold for 28 days, 450 miles in December. He survived to share tales of wolves, animals, weather and other natural events, which were later adapted to stories found in books written by Jack London and other writers. The new trail of 450 miles he blazed alone in the dark of winter, became a shorter route to Fairbanks than the former one of 600 miles, and was called Mahoney Trail; and today, the Richardson Highway follows Mahoney's route.

When making a trail, if trees made the way for his dogs impenetrable, powerful Mike could cut down even the largest of trees. He also crafted rafts of trees by himself if needed to forge a river or flooding in spring melts. When he was a teen, Micke went to work for his two uncles who owned a lumber mill in Norway Michigan where he learned how to hew the toughest timber and mange to stay standing on rolling logs as they swirled down a rushing river.

Miners carried their supplies into the Yukon. Most merchants avoided the trip, preferring to sell goods to the men in the bigger towns, before they headed out, so that the merchants didn't have to carry goods into the Yukon. Postal service into the Klondike was almost nonexistent. The gold rush was not likely to be permanent, reasoned the Canadian government, and the journey dangerous, so they made little effort to ship goods or deliver mail to the distant gold fields. The trail had a risk of robbery, as gold was often being transported.

Mike Mahoney was a trusted man of character, could defend himself, and drive a dog sled team of dogs who loved him; allowing Mike to survive the the wilderness trail in deep winter conditions. Young Mike Mahoney gave hope to those in the wilderness of being able to connect to the outside world with his dog sled team. He earned the trust and a small fortune delivering gold and mail on the trail leading from the Alaskan coast to Dawson City and from the creeks to the towns. In the winter of 1897, young Mahoney delivered a load of gold and mail from Dawson to Skagway on a two-week dog sled trip that earned him $2500.00 for the journey, which would be worth many times more when converted into today's dollars.

In 1904 Mahoney struck a rich gold claim near Fairbanks Alaska, and another rich claim on the Iditarod River. In 1912. Mahoney left Alaska a well-to-do man. He arrived in Seattle with one of the largest shipments of gold ever brought to Seattle by a single individual.

He returned to his Ottawa childhood home with his gold, where his parents owned and worked their 175 acre farm, which he would later inherit as the eldest son of ten children.

In old age, he retired in Santa Monica California, a seaside resort, seeking more comfortable weather, where he died on April 8 in 1951.

Mike's father, Michael Mahoney Sr, was a farmer of 175 acres in Quebec. He expected his son to stay on the farm and resisted sending his son away to school. Mahoney senior was a Fenian Irishman, a group of rebel Irish nationalists in North America founded by kinsman John O'Mahony.

Mike spoke with an Irish accent. Mike's mother, Bridget O'Callaghan, was a strong and handsome six-foot tall woman. She sent Mike to Michigan as a teen because she wanted him to attend the school in Norway. The O'Callaghan family had a tradition of formal education for both boys and girls. Bridget had been sent to a convent for her schooling. Bridget's niece, Eleanor Marguerite O'Callaghan, (Mike's fist cousin) was among the first women in America to earn a college degree. Bridget's father and her two brothers owned O'Callaghan Mills in Norway. Mike's grandfather Patrick O'Callaghan collected Mike in Quebec and took him to live in Norway to enroll him in school. However, by that age Mike had little preparation for school. So, his grandfather trained him in forest skills and as a lumberjack at the O'Callaghan mills. Mike travelled to the Washington Northwest when a logging boom began there; and then on to the Yukon and Alaska.

Mike's story is told in Merrill Dennison’s 1943 book, titled, Klondike Mike, An Alaskan Odyssey.

Famous People of the Yukon Gold Rush:

The Yukon Gold Rush was a big opportunity of the day. Many individuals, who later became famous, were at the Yukon when Mike Mahoney was a living legend of the town.

At the height of the Klondike gold rush in 1898, Dawson City was rightly called the Paris of the North. The boom towns that serviced the miners had just about everything you could imagine.

The Klondike made millionaires out of people who arrived early, before 1898, people like Big Alex McDonald, Swiftwater Bill Gates, Joe Boyle, Belinda Mulroney and others, who owed their fortune to gold. But there were many people in Dawson City during that tumultuous year (1898) who would gain fame or fortune after leaving the Klondike. Examples are:

Jack London lived a year in the Klondike district, mining the land and its people for their stories. His Yukon experiences resulted in two of the world's most famous books, Call of the Wild and White Fang. It's said that Belinda Mulroney who made her fortune with various business enterprises in the Klondike, owned the dog which London used as inspiration to write Call of the Wild while the well-known local Mike Mahoney, afforded Jack London both story lines about his dog sled team and the character of Mike himself. The Klondike Mike character is based on Mike Mahoney, a real person who knew Jack London. Jack London's tales were derived from the dog sled experiences of Mike Mahoney.

Tex Rickard, who gained fame as the manager of Madison Square Gardens in New York City, walked the streets of Dawson in 1898. Tex arranged the fighting matches for Mike Mahoney in Canada and Alaska.

Calamity Jane, who had gained notoriety as a sharp-shooter in Wild Bill Hickok's wild west shows, ran the boarding house in the Klondike where Mike Mahoney stayed when he first came to town.

Augustus Mack from Brooklyn, New York was at the Yukon Gold Rush. Later, he would design the world renowned Mac Truck to tolerate the worst conditions of Canada.

Arthur Treadgold, who set about gathering up mining claims to build a vast network in the mining district, came from England. He was a direct descendant of one of the world's noted pioneering scientists, Sir Isaac Newton.

Alec Pantages was here too. Later he would be the most famous movie theatre owner in North America.

Sid Grauman, whose Chinese theatre in Hollywood is home to the hand and foot prints of the world's most famous movie stars, looked for gold in the Klondike at the turn of the century.

Duff Pattulo, came to the Klondike as an assistant to Major J.W. Walsh, who was sent by the Canadian government as gold commissioner. Pattulo would later become the Premier of British Columbia.

Joe Juneau ran a restaurant in Dawson. The State capital of Alaska is named for Joe because he had discovered gold on the Alaskan panhandle.

OBITUARY: MICHAEL MAHONEY: One of the last of the legendary figures of the Alaskan trail ol the late Mr. Michael A. "Klondike Mike" Mahoney of Ottawa and Buckingham, who died on Sunday at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Santa Monica. Calif. He was ill and had made his home In California since leaving Ottawa Canada in August, Mr. Mahoney had been In falling health for some years past. The well-nigh Incredible feats of strength and exertion that made his name a household word In the days of the Alaska and Yukon gold rush had taken their toll. His widow, the former Louise Raise whom he married was at his bedside when the end came The body will be brought to Ottawa by train and tentative plans are being made for the funeral at Buckingham where Mr. Mahoney was born and lived during his early years, Although not altogether un-expected his death came as a severe shock to the family. Just two weeks ago, his brother James (Jim) Mahoney, also died in Santa Monica. In addition to his widow, Mr. Mahoney is survived by two brothers: Corbett Mahoney of Ottawa and George Mahoney of Monroe, Louisiana; a sister, Mrs. B. O'Meara. of Ottawa, and a number of nieces and nephews. His nephews living In Ottawa are Joseph, Thomas and Clifford Mahoney,Theodore and Gilbert Roady.

OTTAWA JOURNAL http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/48811133/

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