At the end of the 19th century, the journalist Kit Bellow starts on a trip to Alaska to make his fortune in the gold rush. Having just arrived, he meets the attractive and self-confident gold digger Joy, who ridicules the wannabe adventurer as a greenhorn. But Kit finds a friend and companion in the odd Shorty and together they travel to Dawson City. The gold digger city is a tough place to stay and soon Kit has to get in a fight to rescue Joy.

But that is by far not the only adventure Kit has to endure. In the course of events, he is saved from the gallows by the courageous Wild Water Bill, gets cheated by Joy and her father while digging for gold, and eventually finds the legendary "gold lake" together with Shorty. As they cannot hoist the precious metal on their own but don’t want to cooperate with the large Guggenheim and Sons company, they have to change their plans.