"Klondike Kate" Rockwell
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"Klondike Kate" Rockwell (1873-1957) gained her fame as a dancer and vaudeville star during the "Alaska Gold Rush," where she met Alexander Pantages who later became a very successful vaudeville/motion picture mogul. She gained notoriety for her flirtatious dancing and ability to keep hard-working miners happy if not inebriated. She died in obscurity after some minor success training Hollywood starlets in the 1940s.
[edit] Biography
Kathleen Eloise Rockwell was born in Kansas but grew up in Spokane, Washington. Her stepfather had stature in the community and the family lived in a large mansion. But economic failure created tension in the family, and this lack of home stability echoed throughout Rockwell's sometimes stormy life. She was known as an independent spirit, or "tomboy" as a youngster, often impersonating boys and playing with them rather than with members of her own sex. She seemed a happy child, although felt all too intensely the lack of social mobility for women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Her parents sent the rebellious teenager to boarding school, but Kate was expelled. She had little interest for education and spent more time thinking of ways to flaunt the rules.
In the 1890s, after divorcing the stepfather, Rockwell and her mother moved to New York. Here Kate had an unsuccessful attempt at show-biz. She left for greener pastures and arrived in Alaska in 1899. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police held a tight leash on prospective miners and various hangers-on trying to get to the Yukon and find fortunes in gold. Refused entry by a Mountie, Rockwell is reputed to have donned a boy's outfit and jumped on a boat headed for the Yukon.
First working as a tap-dancer in Whitehorse, Rockwell found her stride in Dawson City as a member of the Savoy Theatrical Company. Her act was very popular with the miners, and she was dubbed "Klondike Kate" as a result. It was in Dawson that she met Alexander Pantages, at that time a struggling waiter and bartender who eventually rose to become theatre owner.
The intense love affair between Pantages and Rockwell became the stuff of legend in the Yukon, although streaks of jealousy insured that they found more stability in their professional lives than in their personal ones. They were not above swindling unsuspecting miners, and this dubious quality eventually infected their own relationship. She later accused him of reneging on a promise to marry her as well as cheat her out of her money.
In 1902, the Alaska Gold Rush was already dying out and Rockwell headed south, first to British Columbia where she set-up a store-front movie theater and eventually to eastern Oregon, where she seems to have played the part of a recluse and social outcast.
She never achieved any of the fame she briefly held in Alaska, although she made full use of the memories. "Sourdough" reunions in the 1930s provided a measure of uptick in her fame, as did training young Hollywood starlets in the 1940s.
Near the end of her life she married a Yukon miner named John Matsen, who remained in Alaska as she stayed in Oregon. They were together for 13 years. Her last years were spent mostly as a visible emblem of the bygone Alaska Gold Rush. Rockwell died in 1957.
[edit] References
- Lucia, Ellis. Klondike Kate: The life & legend of Kitty Rockwell the Queen of the Yukon, Ballantine Books; Comstock ed edition (1972), ISBN 0-345-02684-5.
- Dumond, Val. Mush On and Smile: Klondike Kate, Queen of the Yukon, Muddy Puddle Press; 1st ed edition (August 2002), ISBN 0-9679704-2-3
