The Enterprising Woman Who Built—and Lost, and Rebuilt—a Booming Empire During the Klondike Gold Rush

Illustration by Sonia Pulido Exhausted and hungry, the prospectors stumbled into Dawson City in the late summer of 1898 after a grueling journey—and found what must have seemed a mirage. Before them towered a three-story hotel, light streaming through the windows from cut-crystal chandeliers and gleaming off the brass and mahogany bar. Inside the Fair View Hotel, its diminutive proprietor, Belinda Mulrooney,…