CHALLENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN (continued) The Kantishna gold rush of
1905 had come and gone by the time Doctor Cook's summit story
hit the papers in 1906. Of the thousands who had followed Judge
Wickersham to the Kantishna Hills only about 50 hard-core
prospectors and miners remained, centered on the streams flowing
into Moose Creek. These men were seasoned veterans who had taken
over the best claims and were prepared for years of mine-
development toil. Easy surface gold had been quickly exhausted;
illusions of quick riches and those who held them had departed.
On the fringes of the isolated mining camps that year of 1906
roamed two other men important to this history, Harry Karstens
and Charles Sheldon. Karstens was a bona fide Sourdough:
Klondike stampeder, Seventymile River miner and cofounder of the
nearby town of Eagle on the upper Yukon, and, lately, dog-team
mail driver for the Kantishna camps. Sheldon himself was no
stranger to Alaska and the Yukon country. A man of independent
wealth, this distinguished