Work on the culvert at Boyd
Grand Canyon began on July 11 when the young black soldiers of Boyd’s Company C crossed the Teslin River and moved three miles south and east to the north wall.
This canyon needed a very long culvert and a very deep fill. In his memoir, Me and Company C, Boyd records the company’s effort in detail.
Down on the timber culvert, the men ran out of the metal spikes they used to pin the timbers together. They resorted to drilling holes through the logs with a compressed air drill and shaping wooden spikes to drive in through the holes.
With the culvert in place, the men had a deep canyon to fill and a lot of dirt to push over its walls. To speed things along, the 73rd Pontoon Company ferried a bulldozer down adjacent Teslin Lake and unloaded it past the canyon. A catskinner of the 93rd drove it back up to the south wall of the canyon. The soldiers pushed dirt into the canyon from both sides.
Northern Sector commander, General Hoge, and his boss from Washington, Major General Sturdevant, in Yukon Territory on an inspection tour, planned a visit to Company C at Boyd’s Canyon. An hour and a half before the VIP’s arrived, T/4 Frank Hinkel, pushing dirt over south wall of the canyon, got too close to the edge. His dozer followed the dirt over. Hinkel tried to jump but banged his head and sat back down; rode his steel mount down to the floor of the canyon. Luckily, the dozer landed on its tracks.
Clambering down from his side of the canyon, Boyd found Hinkel shook up with a bump on his head.
“Who told you to drive that dozer over the edge of the bank?”
“Nobody, Sir.”
“Then what are you doing down here?”
“I really don’t know, sir.”
Boyd ordered Hinkel and his dozer back to work and when the Generals arrived they found a busy, normal work site.