Like many men of the nineteenth century, Joseph Francis Ladue (1854-1901) sought to rise from humble origins to a position of wealth--by way of the motherlode. His quest took him to the dusty, rowdy boomtowns of Deadwood and Tombstone and the unexplored territory of Canada's Yukon. There, for fifteen years, he worked as a prospector, trader, miner, and promoter of the Yukon Valley. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, Ladue founded Dawson...