Howard Hamilton Hart (d. 1927)
	
Howard Hamilton Hart was originally from Iowa [or Indiana]. He participated in gold rushes in the Dakotas, Colorado, and Montana.((Dawson City Museum, Yukon Order of Pioneer (YOOP) microfilm; “Millionaire Takes Wife at Secret Wedding.” //San Francisco Chronicle// (San Francisco), 20 June 1919.)) 
	
Hart came north in 1886.((Dawson City Museum, Yukon Order of Pioneer (YOOP) microfilm.)) He mined on the Fortymile River at Hamilton Bar.((“Prospectors’ Hall of Fame.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association, 2020 website: http://web.archive.org/web/19991005070153/north-land.com/ypa/hall.html.))  Miners from the Fortymile in the fall of 1888 reported that miners were getting fair returns although many places were mined out. The best claim was on Hamilton Bar where $1,200 was taken out by sluicing in three 24-hour days’ time. Wages were from eight to ten dollars an hour; flour was seventeen dollars a barrel and bacon and beans were thirty cents a pound. About a hundred men expected to winter at Forty Mile.((“Mining on the Yukon.” //The West Shore,// Volume 14, Number 10, October 1888.)) Hart lost his first fortune in a shipwreck and considered himself fortunate not to drown.((Dawson City Museum, Yukon Order of Pioneer (YOOP) microfilm; “Millionaire Takes Wife at Secret Wedding.” //San Francisco Chronicle// (San Francisco), 20 June 1919.)) 
	
The sternwheeler with the winter’s supplies failed to make it up the Yukon River to Forty Mile in 1889 and Hart, along with fifty- to eighty others, took the last boat going down river in October. Hart and George and Kate Carmack opted to stay the winter at Gordon Bettles post near the mouth of the Tanana River. They built a small cabin heated with a Russian furnace formed of clay and rocks. In the spring Hart and the Carmacks parted ways.((Deb Vanasse, //Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold.// Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2016: 86-87.)) 
	
William Liggett was Hart’s partner in the early days.((Virgil Moore, “Sour-doughs meet in Mansion.” //Oakland Tribune// (Oakland, Calf.), 2 March 1911.)) Liggett came to Forty Mile in 1889 and secured a profitable mine on the Fortymile River.((“At his touch rocks yielded up their gold.” //San Francisco Call// (San Francisco), Volume 84, Number 137, 15 October 1898.)) Hart was at Forty Mile to sign the founding charter of the Yukon Order of Pioneers in December 1894.((Yukon Archives, D. E. Griffith, “Forty-Milers on Parade.” Coutts coll. 78/69 MSS 087 f.5.)) 
	
In 1899, Hart took a lay on Carmack’s Claim No. 1 Below Bonanza Discovery in the Klondike and did quite well.((Deb Vanasse, //Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold.// Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2016: 183-84.)) After he made his fortune, Hart married a schoolteacher and they retired to Berkeley, California.((“Millionaire Takes Wife at Secret Wedding.” //San Francisco Chronicle// (San Francisco), 20 June 1919; Dawson City Museum, Yukon Order of Pioneer (YOOP) microfilm.)) Hart and his wife’s first home in the Klondike was a small, unpretentious cabin.((Virgil Moore, “Sour-doughs meet in Mansion.” //Oakland Tribune// (Oakland, Calf.), 2 March 1911.)) 

Hart entered the Coalinga oil field in the early days and eventually ran one of the most successful oil companies operating in California.((“Millionaire Takes Wife at Secret Wedding.” //San Francisco Chronicle// (San Francisco), 20 June 1919.)) In 1911, Mr. and Mrs. Hart hosted more than a hundred invited sourdoughs who attended a banquet at the millionaire and lumberman’s [oilman’s] magnificent new mansion in the Claremont Hills.((Virgil Moore, “Sour-doughs meet in Mansion.” //Oakland Tribune// (Oakland, Calf.), 2 March 1911.)) Mrs. Hart was a social leader and the mansion was the scene of many social functions before she died. In 1911, Hart adopted two children from a foundling asylum and made them his heirs. In 1919, Hart married Mrs. Louise Scholler, the divorced wife of a Fresno restaurant keeper.((“Millionaire Takes Wife at Secret Wedding.” //San Francisco Chronicle// (San Francisco), 20 June 1919.)) Louise was Hart’s housekeeper before they married. The Harts raised five children, none of them their own. Two infants were left on their doorstep, as their generosity was well known. Mrs. Hart was living with her foster sons, William H. and Howard H. Hart Jr., at their St Helena ranch before she was admitted to hospital with a heart condition. Louise Hart died in September 1933.((“Howard Hart’s widow dies.” //Oakland Tribune// (Oakland), 20 September 1933.))