Ladue, Joseph. Klondyke Facts: being a Complete Guide Book to the Gold Regions of the great Canadian Northwest Territories and Alaska. New York: American Technical Book Co., (1897). [8801]
Issued in wrappers, this copy recently bound in brown cloth, gilt title to spine, wrapper front (tattered at edges) pasted to a blank leaf, rear of wrapper missing; first several leaves creased, dog-eared at top corner. 18.5 cm (7 1/4 x 5 inches), small cello tape repair to verso of tp, 205, (1) clean pp., the last page being publisher's adverts. The illustration of a gold nugget on the wrapper front is very faint, and captioned "Nugget from the Klondyke."
Map opposite p. 3: "Sketch of Thron-Diuck River and Affluents"; opposite p. 36: "The Boundary Line between Alaska and Northwest Territories"; Opposite p. 48: "Sketch of Forty Mile and Sixty Mile Rivers and Affluents"; Opposite p. 62: "The Northern Boundary of British Columbia". With 4 b/w illustrations. Text, map, and illustrations complete; 205 text pp. with the 4 maps & 4 illustrated plates additional and not part of the pagination. Good. Hardcover.
No. 312b in Kurutz, The Klondike & Alaska Gold Rushes: A Descriptive Bibliography...&c. "Klondyke Facts ranks as one of the essential books on the Klondike. The first part of this expanded work repeats the text found in Ladue's slightly earlier work, Klondyke Nuggets...Ladue had been a prospector in the region since 1882, and after learning of the Bonanza Creek discovery, he founded Dawson City. He smartly opened a sawmill at this epicenter of the Klondike, anticipating a rush for lumber. Ladue decries the amount of unreliable information being circulated and warns eager gold seekers to stay away until better means of communication could be established...[contents include] 'Routes and Distances, Transportation, Mining Laws, How to Stake a Claim, Where to Register Your Claim, Modes of Placer Mining and Quartz Mining, Return of Gold from the Diggings, Mortality, Cost of Living, etc.' The text is loaded with quotes from others who also had firsthand experience in this remote land, including several women."
