Most accounts of the American gold rush focus on California in 1849 or the Klondike at the turn of the century. Less well known is a small patch of forest on the Canada-Minnesota border where, in 1893, a prospector found a rock flecked with gold, and within months an entire boomtown had sprung up around it. According to the records of the Voyageur National Park podcast series, held by the U.S. National Park Service, the boomtown that came up following that discovery, called Rainy Lake City, grew from complete non-existence to a population of several hundred in less than a year. Seven years later, the town was abandoned. The mine at the center of it all produced around $4,500 worth of gold, roughly $213,000 in today's money, according to the National Park Service.
A rumour, a rock and a rush
