Yukon Cornelius

Yukon Cornelius is a protagonistic character from the 1964 Rankin/Bass television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Voiced by Larry D. Mann, Yukon Cornelius is an arctic prospector who leads the audience to believe that he's searching for either gold or silver, but is actually seeking peppermint as revealed at the end of the original version of the special. His greedy behavior inspires the song "Silver And Gold", sung by Burl Ives as his character of Sam the Snowman.

Yukon is a blustery but benign character and ends up helping not only Rudolph and Hermey, but the Abominable Snowmonster, or "Bumble" as he refers to him as well. Yukon Cornelius can be seen throughout the special tossing his pick ax into the air, sniffing, then licking the end that contacts the snow or ice. The removal of the scene near the end of the special (for subsequent telecasts) in which Yukon Cornelius discovers a "peppermint mine" by that method near Santa's workshop left audiences assuming that he was attempting to find either silver or gold by taste alone. The scene was returned to the film in 1998 and the DVD in 2004 as well.