h:m_hirshberg
Max R. Hirshberg (1877 - 1963)
Max Hirshberg was born in Columbus, Ohio. He started to Dawson in 1897 but arrived in Juneau too late in the season so he and his party wintered there. They escaped the snow-slide at Sheep Camp but their outfit of 5000 pounds was buried in the snow. His associates turned back but he continued on to Dawson. With meagre means he started a roadhouse.1) His partner in the business was Hank West.2)
Hirshberg sold his interest in the roadhouse in 1900 and joined the stampede to Nome. The night before he was to leave, the hotel he was staying in caught fire. In the dark he stepped on a nail, ended up in the hospital with blood poisoning, and was unable to leave Dawson until March. It was too late to go downriver by dog team so he decided to bicycle. He had a fur robe, a waist-belt with his gold, and a change of underwear.3) Hirshberg nearly drowned in the Shaktolik River and lost his watch and a poke of gold worth $1500 in dust. He developed snow blindness and broke a chain just east of Nome. He rigged a sail on his bike and arrived in Nome on 2 May 1990.4) Cycling was a common mode of travel at the time, but few attempted thislong a trip.5)
Hirshberg prospected and cooked, and in the fall he returned to the lower states and organised the Arctic Mining and Trading Co. in Youngstown, Ohio. Returning to Nome in 1901, he started a store in Teller and began buying mining property. By the fall of 1903, he owned 104 claims on Sunset Creek and some tin claims near Ear Mountain in the Seward Peninsula. In 1904, he had the capital to build eighteen miles of ditch and start hydraulicking his tin claims.6)
In the 1950s, Hirshberg wrote an account of his bicycle trip to Nome for his children and grandchildren. His granddaughter, Penni Busse, submitted the account to the Alaska magazine which published the story in 1978.7) Hirshberg’s trip was recreated in 2003 by three cyclists, Andy Sterns, Frank Wolf, and Kevin Vallely. Their trip was written up in a National Geographic article “Ice Breakers Follow Frozen Trail of Gold Rush.”8)
1)
, 4)
, 6)
Coleen Pustola, “Max R. Hirschberg.” 2018 website: http://alaskaweb.org/bios/hirschbergmr.html
2)
Eric Shalit, “Max Hirschberg’s 1,200 mile bike odyssey to the Klondike Gold Rush in 1900.” Tubulocity, 2020 website: http://tubulocity.com/?p=66
3)
Fia Jampolsky, “The pioneering Jews who went north to find riches in the Klondike.” The Canadian Jewish News, 5 May 2020.
5)
Terrance Cole, Wheels on ice: Bicycling in Alaska 1898-1908. Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1985.
7)
M. R. Hirschberg, “My Bicycle trip down the Yukon.” Alaska, Vol. 44, No. 2, February 1978.
8)
Eric Shalit, “Max Hirschberg’s 1.200 mile bike odyssey to the Klondike Gold Rush in 1900.” Tubulocity, 2020 website: http://tubulocity.com/?p=66
h/m_hirshberg.txt · Last modified: 2024/11/14 22:28 by sallyr