Down the Yukon River but up the Teslin, steamboats like the SS Nisutlin carried the soldiers and equipment of the 340th Engineers to their starting point at Teslin and Morley Bay deep in the interior of Yukon Territory. General Hoge had ordered the 340th to build highway from there through into the mountains of British …
Tag Archives: Teslin
Murder on the Yukon
Murder? The last thing on the minds of Fred Clayson, Lynn Relfe, and Lawrence Olson as they spent Christmas morning walking down the bank of the Yukon. A couple of hours later and a few kilometers away, their nude corpses floated under the Yukon ice. Information included came from Michael Gates’ book The link will …
Tiny Teslin Post
Tiny Teslin Post never saw it coming. In July 1942, the soldiers of the 93rd Engineers, with their bulldozers and trucks and graders suddenly roared out of the woods beside Teslin Lake. The soldiers bulldozed at and around the tiny village and its 130 citizens, dropping trees in every direction. Link to another post …
Cairns along the Highway
Cairns near Nisutlin Bay mark the final resting places for two men who came to the Highway and never left. Link to another story “Bonner and Bess and the Memorial Cairns” James Miller, who drove a tractor trailer truck up and down the Alaska Highway back when it was still dirt and gravel commented on …
Going about Their Business
Going about their business the 130 citizens of Teslin Post heard strange noises in the woods, noises that grew louder, and then soldiers and trucks and bulldozers poured and roared down along the river out of the woods. Little Dolly Porter hid in panic from the massive machines pitching trees in every direction through …
From the Subarctic North to Burma and India
Gouging a Road through Yukon Clyde S. Deal came to te subarctic north to join the 93rd Engineering Regiment in Yukon in April 1942. Through the summer he helped build the supply road from Carcross to Johnson’s Crossing on the Teslin River, learned to deal with muskeg and airplane sized mosquitoes. Through the late summer …
Continue reading “From the Subarctic North to Burma and India”
Kidnap the Kids
Meeting the Inland Tlingits Kidnap the kids for their own good, government policy in the early 20th Century. At the biannual Inland Tlingit Celebration Chris and I have horned in at the head table—and got away with it. We came to meet Ida Calmegane, but two other elders share the head table with her. …
Meeting the Inland Tlingits
We met and got to experience the Inland Tlingits by luck, and by the grace of our friends Bonner and Bess Cooley. Preparing for a publicity trip to Canada and Alaska to coincide with the release of our book, We Fought the Road, we knew we would get to visit Teslin again and we called …
Bonner and Bess and the Memorial Cairns
Bonner and Bess Cooley live at the heart of Teslin, Yukon. They may, in fact, be the heart of Teslin, Yukon. More on Teslin Today A few years ago, we travelled through Yukon researching the book we would title, We Fought the Road, and in Teslin we met Bess and Bonner They helped us, taught …