Hell bent for their portion of the Alaska Highway, the lead company of Colonel Paules’ 18th Engineers left the opulent SS Aleutian; moved off the dock directly to the depot of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad. The 18th Comes to Skagway They climbed into the passenger cars of the narrow gauge train, settled themselves …
Tag Archives: Skagway
Inwood to Skagway
Inwood, Iowa to Skagway, Alaska—Doctor Peter Dahl moved his family to an utterly different, utterly unique world. Wife Vera liked Iowa just fine, but “whither thou goest…” The move struck eleven-year-old Lew, ten-year-old Robert, and even three year old Roger as pure excitement. Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway In his memoir, After the Gold Rush, …
Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway
Buffalo Soldiers from the 24th Infantry Regiment came to Skagway in 1899, forty-four years before the black soldiers of the 93rd came there to build the Alaska Highway. The Klondike Gold Rush had brought hordes of gold rushers who threatened the community and each other. The Army sent Company L of the 24th Infantry to …
Strikes, Gold Strikes, in the Far North
Small Gold strikes occurred during the last decades of the 19th century in Alaska. Sitka had one. Windham Bay had one. In 1880 Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris made a bigger strike in Juneau. Then Skookum Jim, his friend Tagish Charlie and George Carmack made a massive strike in Canada, at Rabbit Creek in the …
Bennett Came First
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 …
Minerals and Gold
Minerals seeded the streams and rivers of the isolated far north. If the rugged country offered animals with exquisite pelts, it also offered gold. But for a very long time the tiny, scattered populations of First Nations natives and fur traders knew nothing of minerals or gold. Outsiders Inevitably Came to the Far North …
Communicable Disease and Canadian Natives
Communicable diseases swept the native population of Northern Canada in 1942. And, when illnesses began to appear, the army and civilian physicians who came with the Corps offered their services. At first Canadian bureaucracy made that difficult. Territorial authorities, protecting existing private medical practices, required Canadian licensure for physicians treating Canadian citizens. Sickness from Outsiders …
Continue reading “Communicable Disease and Canadian Natives”
Bad Guys Came to Skagway Too
The good soldiers of the 93rd Bad guys came to Skagway sprinkled in among the 1200 good soldiers of the 93rd. Bad guys came sprinkled among the good soldiers of the white regiments on the Alaska Highway Project too. But a bad black soldier got a lot more attention from the Army. In white regiments …
Segregation came to Skagway in 1942.
Segregation meant that soldiers, at least the black enlisted soldiers, in Skagway in 1942 lived separate, not just from their officers, but from everyone else as well. Six year old Carl Mulvihill spotted black soldiers quartered across the alley from his house. Excited, he waved and called. They ignored him. Only later did he learn …
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 …