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How Fannie Quigley And Her Klondike Gold Rush Restaurant Wagon Became Early Fast Food
A diminutive but ferocious woman became a legend in the rugged Alaska wilderness, first serving food and then mining and living off the land
Lasting from about 1896 to 1899, the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska was a brief but frenzied race to secure riches of the yellow variety. With the precious metal located in a particularly rugged part of the world, only the hardiest prospectors and adventurers could survive and thrive in such conditions. One of them was a young woman named Fannie Quigley, who became a minor celebrity after she outfitted a sled with cooking tools and food and took it into the wilderness to sell meals to hungry and underprepared gold miners — becoming an early version of fast food.
When she was born Frances Sedlacek in 1870 to Bohemian immigrants, her parents likely could have never imagined what a pioneering legend their daughter ended up becoming. She grew up on a homestead near Wahoo, Nebraska and her childhood wasn’t easy, as she lost her mother when she was only six. Living in a homesteading family, she endured the typical travails that accompanied such a lifestyle at the time, including locust plagues and deadly blizzards. However, this also all served to…
