WI Gold Discovered in Alaska Before 1867?

Anaxagoras

Banned
IOTL, the Alaskan Gold Rush began in the 1890s, bringing tens of thousands of prospectors to the region and creating the framework for a viable economy that would eventually bring in long-term settlers.

The Russians sold Alaska to the United States largely because it had never been profitable and was seen as militarily indefensible anyway.

What if gold were discovered in Alaska before 1867, when the area was still under Russian control?
 
The big Q I'd have is will the Russians be able to build up their numbers faster than the almost certain flood of Anglo-American fortune-seekers? If not there's a potential Texas-type scenario here as Anglophones swamp the land.

It would certainly up Anglo-British tensions now that the Canadian-Alaskan border is suddenly very important.
 
Nearly all of "Alaskan" gold was actually in the Yukon Territory. In Canada. In the British Empire.

While a relatively few placer deposits were located in Alaska along the current and former beds of the Yukon and it's tributaries, the "mother lodes" which had shed those deposits were located in the Yukon Territory. In Canada. In the British Empire.

Alaska was merely an easier way to get to the Yukon. Prospectors passed through Skagway or up the Yukon river to get to the territory because that was the quickest way to get to fields. The Alaskan gold rush was in all actuality people rushing through Alaska to get to the Yukon.

A gold strike in the Yukon thirty years earlier will find all the parties involved less able to control the situation. Canada is on the brink of confederation and has a very limited presence in the region. Contrast that to the 1890s when the RCMP was able to quickly establish a permanent presence in the Yukon and even enforce provisioning requirements for prospectors traversing the pass at Skagway.

Because Russia's presence in Alaska proper in 1867 is far less than the US presence thirty years later, Russia will most likely lose control of the rush passing through it's Alaskan territories. Prospectors, as they did throughout the 19th Century, will flock to the region and Russia will be unable to monitor, let alone police, their activities.

With the majority of the gold on Canadian soil and Russia unable to control the increasingly anarchic situation, selling off the resulting headache to the US may still occur.
 

The Dude

Banned
Was mining equipment sophisticated enough at the time to excavate the gold? Furthermore, was it economically feasible to ship gold in and out of Alaska?
 
Was mining equipment sophisticated enough at the time to excavate the gold? Furthermore, was it economically feasible to ship gold in and out of Alaska?

The first gold mining in the Yukon was very low tech, the heavy equipment wasn't brought in until later.
 
I think that the initial British reaction would be similar to that of the Stikine Gold Rush: Separate the Yukon from the North-West Territories and declare the area a colony. However, Yukon would definitely last longer as a territory, and with proper butterflies, we may see a British Dominion in the Pacific other than Canada.

It would be interesting to see how things would unfold if the gold were discovered before the end Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly in the area. Would they eventually suffer the same fate as the EIC, be a giant multi-billion dollar corporation today, or still end up as a department store just like OTL?
 
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