Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Discovering a buried treasure. It’s something everyone would love to do, though it’s not exactly a solid retirement plan. Gold and silver have been discovered in Clinton County over the years, in a variety of locations. In fact, county founder Jerry Church had once mined for gold, making a total profit of thirty-seven cents. But it’s never been enough to create a frantic, concentrated gold rush.

Not like the Yukon, in the late 1800s. That was a big deal. And it even brought some locals out to explore.
On August 16, 1896, gold was discovered in the Yukon, on the northwest side of Canada. This triggered a gold rush, people traveling out there in the hopes of getting rich, remembered even today in fourth grade classes and Woody Woodpecker cartoons. This gold rush included a few Clinton County men, an expedition formed of four brothers and their sidekick.

Robert, John, Thomas, and Samuel Myers all got together, recruited their friend John Gritner, and began planning to leave for the Yukon on December 12, 1897. The newspapers followed their progress with the headline,”Going To The Klondike: Lock Havenites To Seek Fortune In Frozen Gold Fields.” Robert Myers was from Flemington, actually, which made the headline slightly inaccurate, and a hundred and twenty-six years later, I am demanding a correction. (Acrtually, it’s entirely possible that my awful headline makes us even.)

The plan was for the men to leave Clinton County on February 10 and travel north, but they made their plans a bit faster than expected, and left much earlier. By February 10, 1898, they’d already gotten as far as Canada and were sending letters home. These went to their mother, Mrs. Ellis Myers, who took the information to the local newspapers.

By February 10th, they hadn’t quite reached the Yukon, but they’d already had a little adventure. Samuel Myers had spotted a pickpocket in Seattle, tackled him, and handed him over to the Seattle police.

After that, the men traveled through Canada, reached their destination, failed to find any gold, and returned home. Robert Myers appears to have gotten some hunting in, as evidenced by a much later article, which said,”He has confined most of his hunting to Central Pennsylvania, but while on a gold expedition to Alaska with several of his brothers about 33 years ago, Mr. Myers hunted big game along the Yukon Trail.”

Out of all five obituaries, none of them mentioned the tons and tons of money these men had at the time of their death. They appear to have made zero dollars, which is still zero dollars even by today’s standards. The men seem to have given up the search and returned to Clinton County without making too much of a big deal of it, as you might expect.

John Gritner died in 1922, Thomas Myers in 1928, and Samuel Myers in 1936. None of their obits even mentioned the gold-hunting expedition at all. Robert Myers was subject of the 1932 article, which wasn’t even about looking for gold, but about his hunting expertise. The gold rush was nothing but a quick side mention in the much larger article.

But the community appears to have remembered the incident, at least to some extent. Fifty years later, in December of 1947, long after the men were gone, an article appeared in the local newspaper: “Recall Plans Of City Men To Go For Klondike Gold.”