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Slick as a Mitten: Ezra Meeker's Klondike Enterprise
reviewed by Steve Rumsey
September 2009

Students of Pacific Northwest history will recognize the name Ezra Meeker, who was an early pioneer who came west on the Oregon Trail in 1852. He and his wife, Eliza Jane, were among the founders of Puyallup and made a fortune growing hops. When insects wiped out their hops business, Ezra turned to other enterprises, including banking and mining. In his later years, he devoted much of his time to memorializing the Oregon Trail, working to have it preserved as an essential part of our American heritage. But the focus of Dennis Larsen's new book, Slick as a Mitten, is on the years Meeker spent in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush when Meeker was in his 60s.

These were heady times. A stock market crash and severe depression left many people without work and looking for a way to restart their lives. So when news hit the newspapers in the late 1890s about gold strikes in the Yukon, tens of thousands of people headed north in hopes of striking it rich. Ezra's son, Fred, was one of these, and though he didn't fair all that well in mining, his report to his father that there were no fruits and vegetables for sale in the Yukon started the Meeker family on a new enterprise: If mining wasn't going to pay off for them, why not mine the miners? Many of them had gold dust in their pockets and a hunger for something besides beans and moose, and Ezra was just the man to help them to round out their diet.

He put most of his family to work dehydrating eggs and vegetables and canning soup, while he worked out a way to ship his freight by steamer to Skagway, then by trail over the Chilkoot and White Passes, and on to the Klondike. There he set up a store in Dawson City where he and his family sold their wares and worked their mine until the gold petered out in the early 1900s.

Slick as a Mitten gives a good account of those days through the correspondence of Ezra to his wife, Eliza Jane. Meeker's letters, which are kept in the archives of the Washington State Historical Society Research Center in Tacoma, are reproduced here as a way of telling the story of the Klondike Gold Rush from a merchant's point of view in the voice of an intelligent, observant man who took part in the event. Meeker wrote his wife as often as he could, often addressing her as "Wife" and closing each letter with "Husband." The letters are full of the details of their business ventures, family news, and accounts of the hardships and adventure of the Yukon. Topics run the gamut from high adventure -- ascending Chilkoot Pass, running White Horse rapids -- to the mundane -- "baking" his feet on an iron stove during the bitterly cold winter, worrying about the price of potatoes -- details which take the story of the Klondike Gold Rush out of the realm of myth and legend and back down to firm earth.

Larsen fills in the historical background along the way, but doesn't allow his commentary to intrude on the letters themselves, which tell the bulk of the story. The book is well-indexed and illustrated with historical photographs and maps. For people interested in the history of the West, especially in the Pacific Northwest and the Klondike, this will be a good read.

Dennis M. Larsen's Slick as a Mitten: Ezra Meeker's Klondike Enterprise. WSU Press: 2009. Trade paperback. $24.95.

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