ArizonaRealCountry.com 23 November 2018 Present this ad at your tour to be entered to win in our monthly drawing. FREE HAPPY HOUR EVERY FRIDAY!* 4:00pm-6:00pm at The Prickly Pear Cyber Cafe *Call for details the press by then and those articles both informed readers of the mining camp and its potential and brought potential buyers to claims in the district, several owned by Nellie herself. One article Nellie wrote for the Tucson Daily Star showed her knowledge of mining. She wrote of the geological formations of the strike, the methods employed in ming the gold, assays, and richness of the gold, as well as the surface equipment being used, the types of claims and leading men ramrodding the gold recovery. Moves On Like many miners and prospectors of the day, Nellie Cashman moved on after working a mining district for a couple of years. Following her Harqua Hala successes, Nellie Cashman’s name appeared in Sonora mining camps and in Globe, Jerome, Prescott, and Yuma, as well as several places in Montana. It seemed that when a mining camp boomed, Nellie was there to boom with it, or at least size up its potential. To The Klondike She was operating the Hotel Cashman in Yuma in 1897 when she heard of the gold strike in the Klondike. Nellie closed the hotel and headed north over the famed Chilkoot Pass to Dawson. Following her usual pattern in the Klondike, Nellie opened restaurants and began filing claims. The restaurants provided her with a steady cash flow to develop her mining claims. Her late sister’s son, Tom, was now a grown man and had gone into the Yukon Territory with his aunt to help her. Nellie and Tom Cunningham made a good team. Together they worked the restaurants, cooked, served the miners and washed dishes while prospecting and working claims during off times. Always generous, the local hospital and the Catholic Church benefited considerably from Nellie’s successes with her claims. After investing her profits in acquiring additional claims, Nellie still had money left over to fund the hospital and church. She was a major contributor to the Sisters of St. Anne, an order she had helped since financing its first hospital in Victoria, BC, during her first expedition to the region in 1875. Century Turns In Dawson Dawson was a typical mining camp town, populated with drunks, gamblers, con men, prostitutes, and wannabees. Nellie did business with them all, but her social life consisted mainly of visits with the sisters and visiting priests. Nellie Cashman and her nephew were doing well in the Dawson region when the century turned and continued to find the area profitable until 1904 when the Dawson gold rush began to peak out. Nellie was ready for the news that came that year of new gold activity on the Chena and Tanana Rivers which are near today’s Fairbanks. By the end of 1904, Nellie had a store and mining supply company going there and was filing and working claims. To The Edge Of The World Then, in 1905, word began flowing down to the Fairbanks area of fabulous gold specimens found on the Koyukuk River, far to the north, north of the Arctic Circle. Nellie went to the Koyukuk River basin that year and prospected along Nolan and Wiseman creeks. In the next twenty years, Nellie would file more than 20 claims there and seriously develop and work six of them. Nolan Creek was a mining camp farther north than any other in the world at that time. Nellie was at home in the Koyukuk River basin. Along with a couple of hundred other die-hard miners, she lived on the edge of the world with no amenities, no luxuries, and a bitter climate. She lived there longer than she lived any one place in her life. There was a certain peace for Nellie to this mining district that was notably absent in many of the old boom mining camps she had worked. There were less than a dozen women in the area and most were prostitutes. Some scribes called the residents of the Koyukuk district the “flotsam of the world” and pictured the place as inhabited by “escaped criminals.” Nellie mined, hired miners, bought and sold equipment and did well. She did well enough to make nearly half a dozen trips to Arizona to visit friends and her nephews and nieces. She would visit Seattle and San Francisco to purchase mining equipment and once even went to New York on a purchasing trip. She had to travel hundreds of miles to Fairbanks from Nolan Creek by boat, sled or wagon, depending on the season and the weather. From Fairbanks, the trip south was a bit easier, but not much in those days. Nellie left Nolan Creek almost every year on one of these trips. continued on page 24