The gold rush era in the United States began in California in 1848 and ended around the year 1900. (Yukon) Although miners searched for the precious metal in the twentieth century , the Klondike Gold Rush, which occurred around 1897 until 1900, was the last of some of the great events that happened. People flocked to the upper Yukon River in hopes of getting rich. Many people had traveled from the Canadian and American regions to the center of the Klondike Gold Rush to realize their dream of one day becoming rich in gold. (Location 48) The Yukon River valley in Canada and Alaska was once peaceful and isolated, with wild animals and some white fur trappers and people. The miners had wandered north after the California fields gave way and made their dreams come true with a few dollars in gold they had managed to get from their mines. This loss of gold in California had turned peaceful Alaska into a fury of greed and envy that would never make Alaska the same. The United States acquired Alaska in 1867, but it was essentially unknown and unstable until the late 1890s, when large numbers of people from Canada and America had flocked there in search of gold. (Alaska's Gold) Juneau, Alaska, had been founded in 1880 after gold was found there, but the most serious strike occurred in August 1896, when the son of a forty-nine-year-old California man, John Muir, found the gold while sieving Rabbit Creek, which had soon become Bonanza Creek. Many men during this early period enjoyed gold patches that had netted them more than a million dollars. News of this particular gold strike did not reach California and the rest of the West Coast until the summer of 1897. This gold rush had followed the pattern of the California Gold Rush of 1849. (Poynter 79) In the 1880s , one of the largest racing began. John Muir was one of the few men who started the gold rushes in Alaska and made Alaska what it is well known for, the last frontier. John Muir was taking a canoe trip through the Inside Passage in 1879 and predicted that there would be large quantities of gold in Juneau, the capital of Alaska in what is now America. In 1886, John Muir, along with two other men, stopped for lunch at Rabbit Creek and saw a sight that would set the world ablaze with gold rush..