The History of Klondike
The single most iconically named, most widely played patience game there is - so ubiquitous that for a couple of generations of computer users, "Solitaire" meant this one specific game.
A Name From the Gold Rush - Maybe
Klondike belongs to a large family of one-player "patience" card games that spread through Europe and North America over the 19th century, most needing nothing but a standard deck and a flat surface. The specific ruleset played today - seven cascading tableau columns, four foundations built up by suit, a stock and waste pile to draw through - had settled into roughly its modern form by the late 1800s, under a variety of regional names.
Exactly how it came to be called "Klondike" is genuinely uncertain. The most-repeated story ties the name to the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s, the idea being that prospectors travelling to, or wintering in, the Yukon played it to pass the time - a colorful, plausible-sounding origin that, like many card game etymologies, has never been pinned down to a documented first use. PaperGames repeats it here as the popular account, not as settled history.
Bundled With Windows
Klondike's overwhelming popularity today owes less to its 19th-century card-table origins than to one specific piece of software: Microsoft bundled a version of it, simply named "Solitaire", with Windows 3.0 in 1990 - reportedly included in part to gently teach a generation of new Windows users how to click, drag, and drop with a mouse.
It worked almost too well: within a few years Windows Solitaire was reputed to be one of the most-used pieces of software in the world, installed on effectively every PC that shipped with Windows whether or not its owner ever meant to open a game. It reshaped what "solitaire" meant to millions of people who had never played a single physical card game by that name.
This Version
PaperGames plays the standard draw-one ruleset with no redeal limit, favoring the lower-friction version of the rules the same way this collection's FreeCell does - a fresh shuffle every game rather than a fixed set of numbered deals, and no cap on how many times you can cycle back through the stock.