GOLD RUSH LURED SIDNEY ATTORNEY TO ALASKA

Charles R. Hess, or Charlie, to his friends, was a successful lawyer in Sidney. As stories of the fabulous gold discovery on the beach at Nome sifted down to Shelby County, Charlie and his friends talked of going to Alaska to strike it rich. Hess soon realized he had been, in his words, "stricken with the gold bug fever."  His friends told him that he never should consider such a trip, especially with his handicap. But Charlie had the fever, so he left in the early spring of 1900 for Alaska.

He traveled by train to Seattle. Hess then boarded the ship Garrone for a tempestuous 30 day trip on the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea to Cape Nome, Alaska. When he arrived, he found the beach crowded with "30,000 white, yellow and black men from every nation on earth." Charlie found lodging with a fellow "sourdough," bought equipment and began prospecting.

After six months of hard work and no strikes, they heard of a great new find that had been made at the Cape of Good Cope on the north side of the Seward Peninsula within the Arctic Circle. It was estimated to be 300 miles from Nome. Giving little thought to how they would get there and less to how they would return, Hess and his friend set off across the vast white wilderness in search of gold. The date was January 6, 1901. There were just two hours of daylight each day.

Their equipment consisted of a dog sled, food provisions and utensils, a sleeping bag and a tarpaulin. They had no tent of any kind. Hess also packed what was for him a necessity - a large supply of chewing tobacco. Their most important resource was a number of Newfoundland, Siwsh and Esquimau breed dogs.

The men also had purchased a compass to use for navigation. They quickly found out that the compass was useless because of the magnetic fields near the Arctic Circle. Taking bearings on the mountains ahead, the men grimly moved on. Hess later remembered thinking the mountains were "20 or 30 miles distant."  They encountered average temperatures along the way of 50 to 75 degrees below zero. The temperature and commonly-encountered blizzard conditions often made it impossible to prepare food. Hess and his fellow traveler covered nearly a thousand miles in this manner without seeing another human being.

When they finally reached the mountains, after eight exhausting weeks, the gold-seekers found they were almost impassable. Often, Hess and his companion had to travel more than 50 miles out of their way to find a draw or portage through the mountains. These draws often served as a flume through which driving wind and snow would pass, sometimes making them impossible to traverse. On these occasions, they would lie in their sleeping bags for days at a time until the winds and snow ceased.

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