W.D. Wood - Perhaps the most extreme case of Gold Fever, or at least the most famous one, struck W.D. Wood the summer of 1897. Wood was the mayor of Seattle in those days, and was out of town on business in July. The mayor had stopped in San Francisco when the S.S. Excelsior landed with a group of Klondike miners on July 15th. There was little commotion though, and their landing was not widely publicized.

   Two days later, though, the S.S. Portland landed in Seattle amid wild fanfare. Headlines reported a ship carrying a "ton of gold", and the fever was set off. Wood, still in San Francisco was seized by the desire to head north and telegraphed his resignation to the Seattle City Council. He chartered a steamship and gathered a group of fellow passengers to help pay the way. The ship set sail with a grumbling group of passengers and an overloaded storage hold.    Arriving on Alaska's west coast in late August, at the mouth of the Yukon River, the steamer offloaded all passengers and cargo and sailed south again. This was when Wood informed the group that ship that would take them the rest of the way to the Klondike lay in front of them, in piles. He had neglected to tell any of them that they would have to construct their own paddlewheeler to get up the Yukon to the Klondike. Furious, but trapped, the group started building and finished the ship in less than a month.

   They loaded all their gear, and grudgingly allowed Wood aboard. They raced upriver in their ungainly, but functional ship named the Seattle No. 1, but they soon ran into thick ice in the middle of nowhere. They set up a winter camp on the riverbank and named it Suckerville. To most travelers delight, Wood left camp that winter and returned to the lower 48.    The group survived the winter in Suckerville and sailed the rest of the way the next spring. They arrived in Dawson City in June of 1898, a year after starting their trip, and joined the thousands of other stampeders who found themselves arriving too late to find any unclaimed soil.