Mission Gold! Gold! Gold!

Mission Gold! Gold! Gold!

The story
Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper front page for July 17, 1897:

GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! Sixty-eight rich men on the steamer Portland. Stacks of yellow metal! Some have $5,000. Many have more, and a few bring out $100,000 each. The steamer carries $700,000.

The news spread like wildfire and the country, in the midst of a depression, went gold crazy. Tens of thousands of men and women steamed up the Inside Passage waterway and arrived in Skaguay to begin the overland trek to the Klondike. The 19th century was the era of railroad building, and an easier mode of transportation into the north was of interest to everyone. Two men appeared on the scene with essentially the same idea: build a railroad through the White Pass to transport all those gold-crazed prospectors. One of them said: “Give me enough dynamite and snoose” he bragged, “and I’ll build a railroad to Hell.”

Ironically, when the railroad opened, the gold rush to the Klondike stopped, and thus its reason for existence!

The mission
This mission is part of the Inventors & Adventurers campaign. I converted my White Pass & Yukon Route: GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! Map into a mission and added quests and AI vehicles.

About the map:
This is a medium-sized 1:3 map covering parts of Alaska (USA), British-Columbia and Yukon (Canada).
The sparsely populated area includes 5 small towns: one by the ocean and four in the mountains alongside the Yukon river.
It includes several supply chains, like prospectors that also carry food and tools, but also silver and copper ore, gold, mail and logs.
It plays around 1898-1903.
The map was hand painted and all cities and industries were placed carefully and manually.
The mission includes a range of objects, assets and scripts to make the map a little bit more Alaskan.

It includes the following:
AI ships that bring and take cargo to the region
Several new industries, like mines, river ports, and mail offices.
Several new cargo types: copper, silver, zinc, dynamite, mail, and prospectors (use passenger vehicles and cargo stations).
All city roads look like country roads to give it a more rural feel
The Yukon river and lakes have painted water, but building on them is very expensive.
Houses and shops were changed into small Alaskan houses and tents for prospectors.
The passenger and cargo stations and rail depot were painted red
Typical music (no copyright)
New animals: orcas and seals.

Note: The campaign aims to portray key milestones in the history of transporation as vividly as possible in their historical context. They also deal with dark chapters in the world’s events, whereby the corresponding episodes are never supposed to be downplayed, and the victims within them never ridiculed. After all, it shouldn’t be left by the wayside that the history of transporation was often and still is a story of conflicts, oppression, and sometimes great suffering. Accordingly, the value judgements conveyed in the individual missions do not reflect the developer’s own values.

Required items:
Campaign Inventors & Adventurers