The Real Klondike Kate(s)
Klondike Kate, the most musical of the Winter Carnival royal family, is known for her boisterous laugh and her warm heart. She teases with a joke, but comforts with a smile. She’s a woman of two minds: one to get the party started and one to make you feel at home. Why is she such a study in contrasts? Perhaps because she is based on not just one real life woman, but two.
“KLONDIKE KATE”
A new Klondike Kate is chosen every year in Saint Paul to join the pantheon and celebrate not just 10 days of Carnival, but all year round. Klondike Kates also continue performing long after “their” year is over, joining the Royal Order of Klondike Kates who are in high demand to share their voices at parades, parties and gatherings in all four seasons.
Need a quick refresher on the Saint Paul Winter Carnival Royal Family? I’ve got you covered. Watch THIS.
Minnesota’s Klondike Kate character was permanently added to the Saint Paul Winter Carnival royal family in the 1970s, but had been informally appearing at the annual events at least as early as 1940. Where did she come from? The character doesn’t really have any connection to Minnesota. The gold rush that made her famous was much farther north. For nearly a century, Klondike Kate seems to have become synonymous with any female character who pioneered her way to the newly opened west. If she worked in, danced in or owned a bar, she was given the nickname “Klondike Kate” no matter what her given first name was. A popular storyline, the “fallen woman with a heart of gold”, has been portrayed in every form of entertainment. There’s even a cartoon character - Glittering Goldie, Scrooge McDuck’s longtime girlfriend.
It’s impossible to measure how many performers have taken on the persona over the years. In doing so, their real names are often lost to history. Also forgotten, too often, are the names of the two very real women who inspired the character in the first place.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Do you ever get the commercial jingle “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” stuck in your head? I’m not sure I’d go to great lengths just to get an ice cream sandwich, but it does make me want to ask another question: “What is the Klondike anyway?”
The Klondike River runs through a region in the Yukon territory of Canada, giving it the nickname. In 1896, gold nuggets were discovered in the river and a gold rush ensued. A continuous stream of prospective miners traveled to the remote area - some completely unprepared for the climate of northern Canada. Authorities began regulating who could enter the territory, requiring each individual to bring enough supplies of food and shelter to last a year because if you didn’t bring it there was no way to get it. They had to prevent overzealous fortune seekers from starving or freezing to death. About 1800 miles from the nearest town, it was a rough journey and only a handful actually turned a profit. Over a short 3 years, over 100,000 people tried their fortunes in the Klondike. Their stories were immortalized in films, books, songs and more.
Considering the era and culture of the time, very few of the prospective miners were women. It’s estimated that only 8% of those who traveled to the Klondike were women. Some traveled with their husbands, but many of them traveled alone - either to seek a potentially prosperous husband or to try their hand at mining themselves. Others were lured by employers who were happy to provide amusements to entertain the lonely miners in return for their share of gold dust. Still other savvy women realized that a group of men in the wild were not going to survive long without the help of a domestic partner. These forward thinkers opened restaurants, laundries, or became seamstresses and earned good money for their services.
KATHERINE RYAN (KATE #1)
Our first Klondike Kate was born Katherine Ryan in 1867. She grew up in a large Irish family in Johnville, New Brunswick. In her twenties, she fell in love with a boy from a wealthy family and it seemed like they might get married, but his mother refused to allow it because she was poor. Heartbroken and ashamed, Kate decided to make the first of many very bold moves for a woman of her time. She moved, all alone, across the continent to Seattle to train as a nurse and built a whole new life for herself. Perhaps emboldened by her success the first time, Kate soon prepared to set out on a new adventure. In 1898, she joined the Klondike Gold Rush.
This was no whim. Kate was going to be prepared, not only because of the regulations that required it, but because she wasn’t going to give the inspectors any excuse to deny a single woman entry. She shopped for all of her supplies at the Hudson Bay Company in Vancouver, which at the time was like a department store, hardware store, feed store, and grocery combined. Her thorough preparations so impressed the store manager that he gifted her an expensive leather satchel and said, “Any lady with the courage to head out to the Yukon on her own deserves the support of the Hudson Bay Company."
As Kate traveled first by steam ship, followed by horse and then by dogsled, she encountered so many delays along the trail. Luckily, she gained the help of a group of North West Mounted Police who were impressed by her can-do attitude and grateful for an able cook to help prepare meals. They all shared a common foe, the weather, as they tried to get up the frozen Stikine River before it thawed and they worked together to survive.
It took Kate almost a full year to reach her planned destination. Along the way, first in Glenora, then Atlin, and finally Whitehorse in 1899, Kate started up a restaurant out of the tent she called home. Her good food and warm personality made her little business the center of the community where everyone came to share news and support. The story goes that it was a miner named Dominic Burns who suggested that Kate change the name of her cafe from the straightforward “Kate’s Cafe” to “Klondike Kate’s Cafe”. She didn’t actually take on the name, but it stuck nevertheless and became well known around the little settlement.
In 1900, Kate was able to move her business out of the tent and into the ground floor of a hotel. Kate had also made enough money to finally build a wooden frame house and enjoy some time off. After two years living in a tent, she had four walls to call her own.
With her “free time”, Kate was asked by the local Mounted Police if she could lend them a hand. The occasional female prisoner, mostly dance hall girls or prostitutes, required female supervision to maintain propriety. Kate took on the part-time job and the title of North West Mounted Police Constable Special. She was a big woman, nearly six feet tall, and her presence commanded respect. She passed no judgment of the ladies in her charge and was successful in her work. It was in this professional role that she may - or may not - have met our other Klondike Kate.
KATHLEEN ROCKWELL (KATE #2)
Our second Kate, better known as Kitty, was about 5-10 years younger than our first. Born in Kansas, Kitty was from a wealthy family that moved to South Dakota and eventually to Spokane. As a teen, she was sent to boarding school but had little interest and dropped out. She first took to the stage in New York City but was lured by the Gold Rush soon after. The story goes that Kitty arrived in Alaska without the supplies required for entry. To get past the roadblock, she dressed as a boy and jumped on a boat at the last minute to avoid the Mounted Police.
Her gumption got her all the way to Whitehorse and she worked as a dancer. Some versions of the story say she worked as a “dancer”, if you catch my drift, and it was here that it is said she crossed paths with our other Kate - in prison. It’s possible that it was another Kate entirely that spent the night under the prison matron’s supervision or it just might be the origin story of the more scandalous version of Klondike Kate.
Kitty found success in Whitehorse and later in the part of Dawson City appropriately nickanmed Lousetown. Her performances became legendary with impossible descriptions of twirling with 100 yards of fabric or wearing a crown with 50 lit candles and her popularity soared. She was christened “Klondike Kate” in the advertisements and the stage name helped her stand out. She raked in the gold dust and began to seek ways to invest her earnings. She met a young Greek immigrant, Alexander Pantages, who was working as a waiter in one of the dance halls. Soon, she joined his stage troupe and he soon became the manager of the Orpheum Theater in town. It was the beginning of his road to assembling a theater empire that would stretch across the western United States and Canada. Their tumultuous relationship was popular gossip all over town and considering their exploits of stealing and swindling, it was no surprise that the two didn’t have much trust in each other.
In 1902, Kitty and Alexander both set out from the Yukon to set up nickelodeons and theaters in other cities. Kitty raised money to back Alexander’s purchase of a theater in Seattle. She went to Vancouver to open a theater herself. Then, in 1907, their romance spilled into thenewspapers when it was announced that Alexander had spontaneously married a young musician named Lois Mendenhall. Kitty understandably felt betrayed, but instead of hanging her head in heartbreak, she boldly sued Alexander for $25,000 and breach of promise. Newspapers followed the story closely because it was unusual at the time for a young woman to fight back in such a public way - especially against a successful movie theater magnate like Pantages. The fight also made headlines when Kitty surprised her own legal council by taking an out of court settlement - shrewdly cutting them out of any deal that would allow them to make any money off of the case.
MISTAKEN IDENTITIES
Meanwhile, Kate Ryan traveled back home for a visit with her family. As she stepped off the train, she was surprised by the notoriety that she had gained, not only from the stories she shared in her own letters, but from those shared by others regaling the tall, sturdy woman who braved the mountains and offered a helping hand to anyone she came across. Unfortunately, stories about the other “Klondike Kate” who was in the headlines had also reached her hometown and people were confused. Was that Klondike Kate their Klondike Kate?
To make matters worse, a play called The Ruggles of Red Gap premiered in 1915. Harry Leon Wilson’s novel was turned into a script which told the story of an English valet who is lost in a poker game between his employer, the Earl, and a rough-around-the-edges westerner. The valet is taken to the frontier town of Red Gap and comedy ensues as he experiences the culture shock in the American West. He eventually embraces the American ideals of freedom and self-determination, finding his own path to self-employment. Meanwhile, the Earl arrives to save his younger brother from the opportunistic clutches of a character named - you guessed it - Klondike Kate. Although she’s a gold-digging hussy, the Earl discovers she has a heart of gold and ends up marrying her himself.
The pop-culture version of Klondike Kate had taken hold and was further entrenched in people’s minds as the play was turned into a movie in 1918 and 1923. By the time of the third remake in 1935, Klondike Kate was thankfully written out of the plot before earning an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
LIFE GOES ON
Kate Ryan returned to Whitehorse and along with taking on the responsibility of raising one of her nephews, she became a gold inspector with the Mounted Police to make sure gold wasn’t smuggled out of the country. She was later joined by her three other nephews as well after her widowed brother became unable to care for them himself.
Tragedy visited her tiny outpost in 1918 when they received news that the Princess Sophia, a steamship carrying 353 people - including one of Kate’s nephews - had run aground on a coral reef and sunk off the Pacific Coast. There were no survivors.
Heartbroken, Kate decided it was time to leave her beloved Klondike. She moved to Stewart, British Columbia and took on the job of Commission Agent for the mines in the area. She was so well-respected in the area that she was encouraged to run for political office at a time when women were just finally being allowed into the political sphere. Although she ultimately decided that elected office wasn’t for her, potential opponents had again dug up the alternate “Klondike Kate’s” colorful history and had tried to associate it with her. She just couldn’t shake the associations with the other Kate.
More and more, Kate traveled to Vancouver - first, to attend the trials associated with the tragedy of the Princess Sophia, and later, to spend the winters at a home she bought there.
The New York stock market crash of 1929 reached all the way to Stewart and the mining industry was devastated. Kate lost all of her investments and eventually her house. She moved permanently to Vancouver, spending her few remaining years ill and poor. Her death in 1932, shook the Canadian frontier. Accompanied to her final resting place by the Canadian Mounted Police, her coffin was bestowed with honors from all of the charitable organizations that she had so passionately been involved with. Humble even in death, no headstone marked the spot where she was laid.
ALWAYS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
1929 saw our other Klondike Kate back in the newspaper headlines as well, but it wasn’t because of good deeds or even good publicity. Instead, Alexander Pantages was on trial for rape and the newspapers unearthed all of the sketchy details surrounding Alexander and Kitty’s relationship and lawsuit. Speculation about whether or not Kitty would be called to testify or attend the trial reached fever pitch when Kitty was spotted at the courthouse. Reporters breathlessly recounted every word, every glance, every touch that the former lovers-turned-adversaries shared. While Kitty did not actually testify in the trial, her appearance overshadowed the entire proceeding.
Kitty stayed in the headlines after the trial for a completely different reason: weddings. Whereas Kate Ryan never married, Kitty Rockwell married three times. First, after buying a homestead in Brothers, Oregon in 1915, she fell in love with a cowboy almost twenty years younger named Floyd Warner. Their marriage ended in 1922 and in 1933 she married a miner she had known in the Yukon, John Matson.
HOLLYWOOD KATE
While Matson was off in Alaska prospecting for precious metals, Kitty was prospecting for Hollywood starlets. Renewed interest in Kitty raised during the Pantages trials led to interest from movie executives and in 1942, Kitty sold the rights to her life story to Columbia Pictures. While in Los Angeles to consult on the production, she took the opportunity to reform her public image. During promotional interviews, Kitty took great effort to describe the dance halls of the Yukon in terms more reminiscent of a church school dance than a rowdy roadhouse. While the Hollywood writers portrayed them as all risque and raucous, Kitty said “We danced like ladies—square dances and waltzes and things like that,” she said, “and our costumes were not the low-cut sort you see now. On stage we wore tights. Dance hall girls in those days wore high-necked shirtwaists, high button shoes and skirts down to the ground as well as wrist-length sleeves.” Although Kitty personally selected Ann Savage to portray her in the film, Kitty lamented the story told on the big screen. “I don’t recognize anything in it that happened to me”.
Kitty was again a single woman in 1946 after Matson was found frozen to death in his cabin. She then sold her land and moved to Bend, Oregon. She continued to hone her newfound persona, focusing on volunteer work, raising money for good causes and helping anyone in need. “Aunt Kate” gained a new fan base, but stories (maybe true, maybe not) still swirled about how Kitty supported herself. Rumors that she was a madam or that she was a bootlegger still followed her wherever she went. In 1946, she married her third husband, Bill Van Duren and the couple retired to Sweet Home, Oregon.
Unable to resist the spotlight, “Klondike Kate” appeared on the TV game show “You Bet Your Life” in 1953. Hosted by Groucho Marx, the show focused less on actual gameplay and more on the comedic conversations between the contestants and the host. As Groucho got to know Kitty and he asked her about her youthful pursuits, her descriptions of dancing on vaudeville stages in the Yukon led to the question, “Are you the original Klondike Kate?” She proudly said, “I believe I am.” (Which the clever will note is a wiley answer. Whether she actually is the original or not, she “believes” she is). Kitty Rockwell Warner Matson Van Duren’s long and eventful life came to an end in 1957.
Kitty Rockwell appears on “You Bet Your Life” with host, Groucho Marx in 1957
PARALLEL LIVES
There is no conclusive proof that the two Kate’s ever met in real life. Kate Ryan never set foot in Dawson City, where Kitty Rockwell found fame among the footlights. Kitty Rockwell only briefly traveled through Whitehorse where Kate Ryan was the center of community life. Still, just as women today who seek a life outside of accepted cultural norms tend to find a natural bond, the two Kate’s lives were connected.
Both women sought adventure and faced hardships, but made it look like the most natural thing in the world. While the culture around them gawped at the idea of women being so bold and self-determined, they blazed a trail as naturally as any of the male “sourdoughs” that they were surrounded by.
As opposite as they may seem on the surface, were they really all that different? Kate Ryan may have shunned the spotlight while Kitty Rockwell sought attention at every turn, but both women sought the same things we all do: to be loved, to be a good friend, to be of service, to be remembered. It seems that over the decades since their passing, the two personalities have melded into the one “Klondike Kate” who blazes a trail through the Winter Carnival each year. Throwing aside any outdated norms about how a lady should behave, our Klondike Kate embodies the bold, audacious, unstoppable lives of both of the Kate’s and keeps their indomitable spirits alive in Minnesota.
