Bennett, in 1898 and 1899, made sense as a first stop in Yukon Territory for the thousands of would be miners passing through on their way to the Klondike gold fields. The majority of them made their way on ships to Skagway, Alaska; struggled up the Chilkoot or the White pass; and settled at the end of Lake Bennett to build boats and wait for the ice to clear from the Yukon River—the rest of the route north.
Among the thousands coming to mine gold, a few came, in the words of John Firth in his fascinating new book, The Caribou Hotel, “to mine miners”. Miner miners, John Barret, Frank Turner, and Thomas Geiger turned themselves into hoteliers.
First, Barret set up a liquor store and bar in a tent next to the Dawson Hotel, itself a collection of tents. When the ice cleared in May 1898 and seven thousand boats launched into the lake and down the river, Barret and his new partners, Turner and Geiger, stayed in Bennett to convert Barret’s bar into The Yukon Hotel.
June 1899 found The Yukon Hotel in a two story building with twenty-five rooms—the lap of luxury in Bennett. Rooms had baths and, if their toilets drained directly into the lake, nobody cared.
Besides, The Yukon Hotel offered the most commodious bar in town.
Other miner miners, of course, saw the opportunity. Other hotels came and brought cutthroat competition. Among other tactics, hoteliers payed hookers to hang around their establishments.
Firth quotes a Yukon Sun review from April 1900, “I would advise respectable women, travelling alone… to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett.”
Meanwhile, other miner miners had turned to the railroad business; gouged a path for narrow gauge rails out of the White Pass cliffs. Newcomers no longer needed to climb the passes to Bennett, but the WP&YT quickly created a problem for Bennett. As the railroad extended its rails, the spot on the map known as Caribou Crossing, also on Lake Bennett and a lot closer to the Yukon River, made more sense than Bennett as the first stop on the lake.
When, in July 1900, the WP&YT replaced its Bennett depot with a new one in the town they called “Carcross”, Bennett died on the spot. By then The Yukon Hotel had already died. The partners, seeing the handwriting on the wall, had moved on.
But another hotel would come to Carcross, and the legend of the fascinating little town would center on it—The Caribou Hotel of Firth’s fascinating history.
I love reading this kind of Canadian history.
Thank you. I love finding it.
Interesting reading, enjoyable and entertaining reading.