Although the poem was fiction, it was based on people and things that Robert Service actually saw in the Yukon.

Lake Laberge is formed by a widening of the Yukon River just north of Whitehorse and is still in use by kayakers. The "Alice May" was based on the derelict stern-wheeler the "Olive May" that belonged to the Bennett Lake & Klondike company and had originally been named for the wife and daughter of Albert Sperry Kerry Sr. It was abandoned after it struck a rock near Tagish, which is about 50 kilometres south of Lake Laberge.

Doctor Leonard Sugden used its boiler to cremate the body of a miner who had died of scurvy, because the ground was frozen too hard for burial. (Although a boat named Alice May sank on Lake Laberge, that happened a decade after the publication of the poem.)

William Samuel McGee(b 1868, Lindsay, Ontario, - d 1940, Beiseker, Alberta) was primarily a road builder but did indulge in some prospecting. Like others, McGee was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush and in 1898 left for the Klondike.

In 1904, Service, who was working in the Canadian Bank of Commerce (not the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce; a frequent error) branch in Whitehorse, saw McGee's name on a form. He talked to McGee about using his name and received permission, which is confirmed by correspondence between McGee and his family.

In 1907 the publication of the poem, along with the others contained in Songs of a Sourdough, made Service famous and McGee the subject of ridicule.

In 1909 McGee traveled south of the Yukon to build roads, including some in Yellowstone National Park. Eventually, McGee and his wife moved to live with their daughter outside of Beiseker. However, in 1930 McGee returned to the Yukon to try prospecting along the Liard River, but met with no success. He did however return with an urn that he had purchased in Whitehorse. The urns, said to contain the ashes of Sam McGee, were being sold to visitors.

McGee spent the rest of his life at his daughter's farm where he died in 1940 of a heart attack.
There is a town named Plumtree in North Carolina, only about twelve kilometers (but twenty-two kilometers by road) from the border of Tennessee.