Skagway has dedicated an entire town to mocking the journalists who covered the Alaskan Gold Rush of the late 19th/early 20th century. They are pretty blunt about it – they refer to the town as Liarsville.
The initial Gold Rush required men to hike long distances carrying all their gear, the journey so difficult that journalists would not make it themselves. Instead, they set up a camp just north of Skagway and relied on the stories of the men returning from the mountains.
Who the hell knows who they talked to, but they began reporting how easy it was to reach the gold mines, how wealth was a sure thing to find. Remember that this was happening in a time with limited communication – people had no choice but to rely on these reports – and many men left their families to come join in the rush, thinking the decision was a no-brainer. They cashed in their life savings to make the trip to Alaska, arriving only to find going from rags to riches wouldn’t be as easy as the journalists made it out to be.
