I recently ran across an article from 1942 by T.A. Rickard detailing the value of gold taken out of the Klondike during the Gold Rush:
“The output of gold from the Yukon in 1897 was $2,500,000; this rose to $10,000,000 in 1898 and reached its maximum of $22,275,000 in 1900. Up to the end of 1911 the total output was over $140,000,000. After 1900 a decrease began, continuing until the output in 1910 was only $4,570,000. In 1939 with the price of gold at $35 an ounce, it was $3,171,000.”
Today gold is running around $1340 an ounce. I tried to do the math but there were way too many zeros there, lets just say there was over a Billion dollars of gold at our current price taken out during those few years.
The Klondike Rush, T.A. Rickard, 1942 in the British Columbia Historical Quarterly, June 1942. read the entire article at:
http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/bchf/bchq_1942_3.pdf