promises than cash. On the return leg he failed to raise money in visits in Illinois and Minneapolis and by July 1897, he was back in the Kootenays, working the claim. When the gold discovery in the Klondike in northwestern Canada was publicized that year, Meeker saw that as a better opportunity, and sent his son Fred to investigate. Fred Meeker returned with a report in November; the Meekers sought to finance a mining expedition to the Klondike, but failed to raise adequate money from investors. Despite his inability to raise funds for mining, Meeker was certain there was a way to make money from the gold rush. He and Eliza Jane spent much of the winter of 1897–1898 drying vegetables, and Ezra Meeker departed for Skagway, Alaska, on March 20, 1898, with of dried produce—Fred Meeker and his wife Clara were already across the border in what would soon be designated as the Yukon Territory. The 67-year-old Meeker, with one business associate, climbed the steep Chilkoot Pass. With thousands of others in boats and on rafts, he floated down the Yukon River once the ice broke up in late May, and sold his vegetables in two weeks in Dawson City. He returned to Puyallup in July, only to set out again with more supplies the following month. This time, he and his son-in-law, Roderick McDonald, opened a store, the Log Cabin Grocery, in Dawson City, and remained through the winter. Meeker returned to the Yukon twice more, in 1899 and 1900. Most of the money earned through groceries was invested in gold mining, and was lost. When he departed the Klondike for the last time in April 1901, he left behind him the body of his son Fred, dead of pneumonia in Dawson City on January 30, 1901. In his writings, Meeker ascribed his sudden departure from the Yukon in 1901 to mining losses and his upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. Meeker scholar Dennis M. Larsen in his book on the pioneer's Klondike adventure suggests that a more likely reason was attempts by those who had lost money in Meeker's enterprises in the 1890s to gain the family's remaining major asset, the Meeker Mansion. That property was sold by Eliza Jane Meeker to her daughter Caroline and son-in-law Eben Osborne for $10,000 in mid-1901 and later that year both Ezra and Eliza Jane executed documents stating that the house had