1955 Canada Quaker cereal form deed piece of land Yukon Gold Rush

One of the most famous cereal‑box promotions in North American history: the Quaker Oats Klondike Big Inch Land Promotion of 1955. It did involve sending in box tops (or simply buying Puffed Wheat/Puffed Rice) to receive a printed deed for one square inch of land in the Yukon. But the legal reality behind those deeds is very different from the childhood myth.

Horizonal fold, small tear.

8" x 5"

You cannot redeem the deed today, and you never truly owned usable land. The promotion was real, the deeds were real pieces of paper, but the land ownership was never legally transferable to the millions of participants.

• Land purchased: 19.11 acres near Dawson City, Yukon
• Legal description: Lot 243, Group 2, Plan 6718
• Number of deeds printed: ~21 million
• Size of each deed: 1 square inch of the parcel

Even though the certificates looked like real deeds, they did not confer legal ownership of any land parcel. Reasons:

• The land was never subdivided into millions of legal micro‑lots.
• The Yukon government would not record such tiny parcels.
• The shell company remained the sole legal owner.
• The company eventually dissolved, leaving the land in limbo.