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Many gold rush dance-hall girls claimed the name Klondike Kate. One of them was Kate Rockwell. Kathleen Eloisa Rockwell was born in Junction City, Kansas on October 4, 1876. She lived in New York then moved to the west coast and then up to Dawson City, Yukon in 1900 with the Savoy Theatrical Company of Victoria, B.C. She remained in Dawson City until 1902, when she opened a nickelodeon in Victoria. She worked with Alexander Pantages, owner of Dawson City's Orpheum Theatre. After several broken marriages, Rockwell married John Matson, a Dawson City miner, in 1933. She married once more after Matson's death, to W.L. Van Duren in 1946 or 1948. In the 1920s and 1940s she was a celebrity as 'Queen of the Yukon'. Klondike Kate Rockwell died in Bend, Oregon on February 21, 1957.
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