A stampede of gold seekers descended on Skagway, Alaska in 1897. As the crow flies, Caribou Crossing and Lake Bennett lay just a few miles from Skagway and from Lake Bennett the Yukon River flowed north to the Gold Fields. No, as they say, big deal. More on Skagway Unfortunately, the stampeders weren’t crows, and …
Category Archives: History of Northern Canada
Schemers and Dreamers
Schemers and dreamers, over a century and a half, created ways to travel and transport material through the great subarctic North—a few ways. This difficult piece of the world fought back at every turn. But over time a stream of adventurous; brave; inventive; and, above all, greedy schemers came to do battle with it. More …
Gangplanks and Leonard Cox
Gangplanks punctuated Leonard Cox’s time with the 340th Engineers. A gangplank in Seattle carried him onto the ship that took him up the inside passage to Skagway. He didn’t know it, but his regiment would defend America by helping build the Alaska Highway through Northern Canada. More from the 340th The Army drafted Leonard …
Peeing in a Coffee Can?
Peeing in a coffee can, an art “Dusty” Hannon had no interest in mastering, led her to carry her very own chamber pot on the train to Carcross. Well, of course. Everybody in Skagway and in sister town Carcross, for that matter, knew “Dusty”, accepted her logic. Skagway welcomed and took its true flavor from …
Towns Sprang from Nothing
Three towns sprang from nothing in 1896, created by Skookum Jim and his partners. They created them from a distance, from Dawson up on the Klondike. But, fittingly, Skagway, Carcross and Whitehorse sprang up in Jim’s old stomping ground. Defending Skagway First the town of Skagway. A boom town of mythic proportions sprouted on …
A Taste for Exotic Furs—And Gold
A taste for exotic furs swept across the civilized world. Exotic furs grew on exotic animals and a lot of them lived at the far northern reaches of the American Continent. More on Furs On that remote portion of the globe, Native Americans, First Nations if you’re in Canada, had developed a tribal civilization …
Defending Skagway
Defending Skagway, Alaska from the marauding Japanese posed more problems than you might think. Luckily, to one young Lieutenant’s eternal relief, it turned out that Skagway didn’t need defending. In June 1942 Lt. Darrel M. Schumacher of the 340th Engineering Regiment cooled his heels in Skagway. He and his men would walk to the Teslin …
Canada’s Reaction
Canada attracts people up from the United States and we carry attitudes and assumptions north across the border. A famously friendly lot, Canadians don’t always challenge our mistaken assumptions. And they don’t take us to task for our attitudes. The things we get up to down here don’t always leave Canada, our oldest and very …
Boyd and his “Grand Canyon”
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. More on culverts This canyon needed a very long culvert and a very deep fill. In his memoir, …
Johnny Johns from Paul Erlam’s Memory
I’m not very scientific about this, but I’m convinced that something in the air in Yukon creates wonderful, unique, larger than life characters. It could have to do with the weather, maybe the isolation. Or maybe mother nature protects her magnificent creation by making it so difficult to live that only unique, tough individuals can …