YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS Yukon Frontiers Historic Resource Study of the Proposed Yukon-Charley National River

The finding of a few thousand dollars worth of gold on the Stewart River in 1885 opened a new frontier that followed patterns established on the older western frontier. The great California gold rush had graduated many experienced miners and prospectors who roamed the West seeking new bonanzas. [1] The men who reached the Yukon represented the same type miner-prospector as the earlier men who followed the stampedes from California to Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. Restless, impatient, and individualistic, they had no time or money to develop lode deposits. Rather they sought placer gold or "poor man's gold"—gold that nature had already partially mined.

Most of these men understood the basic geologic process that formed placers. They knew that after the injection of gold-bearing quartz veins into the Yukon strata occurred, 60 to 130 million years ago, the land folded, faulted, and eroded in processes that loosened the gold particles from the host rock. Rain water and melting snow picked up and carried them into ancient rivers. As the rivers slowed, the heavy gold particles dropped first, followed by sand and gravel. Later, glacial rivers once again swept up the gold and gravel and carried them farther until dumped and buried as the torrent slackened. To these ancient stream beds men from other mining frontiers brought their training, experience, and social institutions.

The minor gold strike on the Stewart River in 1885 and McQuesten's return to the Yukon with mining supplies marked a change in policy of the Alaska Commercial Company. No longer were Indians and their furs the main source of trade, which now catered to the miner. Consequently in the summer of 1886 Harper and McQuesten abandoned Fort Reliance, in the Indian country, and moved to accommodate the miners at Stewart River. During the winter word passed out of Alaska with departing miners that gold had been discovered on the Yukon. More than a hundred miners arrived in the spring to try their hand in the Arctic gold fields.

The Stewart strike proved disappointing and of little intrinsic value. But from it men fanned out in greater numbers to search nearby streams and rivers. Harry Madison and Howard Franklin, two miners who had arrived with Joe Ladue in 1882, travelled forty miles below Fort Reliance to the Fortymile River. Arthur Harper had searched the river years earlier, followed by Ladue himself. But this time Madison and Franklin tracked their boat twenty-three miles upriver into American territory. Here they struck coarse gold—the first rich placer on the Yukon. [2]

Once again, the firm of McQuesten, Harper & Mayo transferred its post from the Stewart to the mouth of the Fortymile. At this time McQuesten was in San Francisco buying supplies. Harper recognized the value of Franklin's gold discovery and knew that hundreds of prospectors would be arriving in the spring. He feared that starvation might ensue if McQuesten did not augment his orders. Even though winter had arrived, a young steamboat pilot and Indian boy volunteered to carry a letter across Chilkoot Pass. The pilot died, but the message got through. [3] Harper's premonition held true—several hundred miners arrived even ahead of McQuesten.

The unexpected change in trading policy caught the Indians unaware and left them confused and frustrated. Suddenly they found their furs second to the miners' gold. But more important, by 1887 they saw the abandonment of both Fort Reliance and Belle Isle. Unfortunately they had become dependent upon these posts: their diet had broadened to include flour, lard, sugar, and tea; their clothing now incorporated items of cotton, flannel, and wool; their weapons included the all-important guns; matches replaced flint; metal pots supplanted woven basketry; and alcohol had been introduced. [4] Although the Indians complained of the long and often dangerous journey to the new Fortymile trading post, economics dictated the company's policy. [5]

By 1887 many prospector-miners entered Alaska who stayed on through the Klondike rush. George Matlock appeared on the Fortymile as well as Frank Buteau, Henry Davis, Gordon Bettles, Michael O'Brien, and Jack Wade. [6] They knew and depended on one another as they in turn depended upon the reliable firm of McQuesten, Harper, & Mayo. Generally the early miners cooperated. In fact, a group known for their tall tales as the Sixteen Liars decided to locate claims of 300 feet each instead of the 1500 feet allowed, thereby generously leaving room for others. [7] A few undesirables, however, also arrived. One man known only as Leslie tried to use strychnine to poison his partners. He was fortunate that no one died and that the miners only ordered him out of the country. [8]

Yet these miners from other western mining camps encountered a surprisingly new environment. On the Yukon the ground was permanently frozen below a depth of only a few inches. Although the Fortymile bedrock on which the gold lay was shallow, the miners grew impatient waiting for the sun to thaw the soil enough to dig. On Franklin Gulch during the winter of 1887 Fred Hutchinson built a fire to thaw the ground. Investigating further he found that the hated permafrost, as the frozen ground was called, made supporting timber unnecessary. Not only could the industrious miner now mine year around, but he did not have to timber his mining shaft. [9] At the end of winter a large mound of gold-bearing gravel lay piled high near the diggings awaiting spring thaw. Once the snow and ice melted and flowed into rushing creeks, the miner could wash his winter dump. The miner from the early Fortymile averaged only $800 a year. [10]

Even though the California and subsequent gold rushes had developed sophisticated equipment for the mining of placer deposits, each gold rush had to evolve through the placer-mining cycle of gold pan, rocker, and sluice box. [11] The gold pan was shaped like a pie tin except larger. The miner filled this pan with gold-bearing gravel, added water, and swished it round and round to carry off the dirt. Eventually, after repeated washings, only the gold was left. The rocker was a box on rockers with a perforated metal top and a sloping blanket inside. The miner dumped in water and gravel together and vigorously rocked it. The gold fell through the perforations and lodged on the blanket. The more sophisticated sluice box depended on a constant and adequate flow of water. The box could be any length, generally between three and fifteen feet, with open ends. Riffles were placed on the floor. As the gravel and water flowed freely through the box, the riffles caught the gold. [12]

Finally, in 1890, the California technique of hydraulic mining reached the Fortymile. Frank Buteau, George Matlock, and their partners built a flume from Franklin Gulch to their claim to create twenty-four feet of pressure, an amount sufficient for hydraulic mining. [13] The water was then channeled into metal pipes and nozzles that directed jets of highly pressurized water onto river banks and hills. The force of the water crumbled the banks and washed their gravel into awaiting sluice boxes.

Although supplies could now be obtained in sufficient quantities for the miners to winter over, in 1889 the miners found they could be more independent than they had believed. The Alaska Commercial Company, which subsidized McQuesten, Harper & Mayo, launched a new steamer, the Arctic. It struck a rock, however, and lost all the winter provisions for the Fortymile. Notice went out of the disaster with a suggestion to winter at St. Michael. George Matlock, Frank Buteau, and two others decided to stay in the Fortymile area and work on their flume. They killed forty caribou and supplemented their meat diet with three sacks of moldy flour and a few beans. When the newly repaired Arctic arrived in the spring, the partner, recalled one, were "all well and happy". Reluctant again to trust the company so completely, the following fall they constructed a fish trap, commonly used by the Natives, and caught a ton and a half of grayling to help them through the winter. [14]

Although most of the claims on the Fortymile were on American soil, the town called Fortymile flourished at the river's mouth in Canada. Around McQuesten's store arose a number of miners cabins, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, saloons, and a settlement of Indians. Initially the miners made the most of what little they had. They lacked stove, stove pipe, and windows. Typical frontiersmen, they improvised. They made a stove and chimney out of rocks and mud, using a flat rock for the top of the stove. For windows they cut a clear piece of Yukon River ice slightly larger than the window opening which they fastened on with wooden buttons. [15] More supplies and a few of the amenities of life came more frequently when the larger and faster Arctic was launched. The new boat could make several round trips from St. Michael each season.

Josiah Edward Spurr of the United States Geological Survey found the miners hospitable, eager for news from the outside world, keenly interested in political developments, and generally more intelligent and better informed than others in his miner experience. Their taste for Shakespeare, philosophy, and science surprised him. [16] A few women had followed their husbands to the Yukon, making rough-hewned cabins into comfortable homes. Missionaries and schoolteachers took their place in the growing community. Yet still a ruckus occasionally shook the camp. One night several men were gathered in a cabin when a man named Washburn became angry at George Matlock and stabbed him in the back. Matlock sought revenge. He returned with his gun, aimed for a flesh wound, and shot through the window at Washburn. The bullet struck Washburn in the thigh. They were "even up" and later even shook hands and became friends.[17] Most legendary of all, however, was McQuesten's generosity. He willingly extended credit or even grubstaked hapless miners. [18]

Partly because of McQuesten's liberal credit and partly because the Fortymile proved less than a bonanza, prospectors toiled up and down most of the tributaries of the upper Yukon. During the winter of 1890 Barney Hill and Captain Billie Moore hauled a year's supply of goods by sled from Fortymile to a point forty miles up the Seventymile River (seventy miles from Fort Reliance, thus thirty miles from Fortymile). They built a ditch, a flume, and several whip-sawed sluice boxes. Six to eight other miners worked the river at the same time, all with poor results. [19] Miners routinely travelled the length of the Yukon, walked, tracked, or poled their way up adjacent streams, and subsisted on bare essentials in order to try their hand at a good prospect.

Everyone tried prospecting. In the summer of 1892 Cherosky, Mercier's and Harper's Creole interpreter at Belle Isle, and his brother-in-law, Pitka Pavaloff, hunted moose up Birch Creek. While hunting, they panned for gold. On one bar of the creek they found some. After staking a claim and naming it Pitka's Bar, they killed a moose and used the skin to make a canoe to float down to Tanana Station.[20] Here they picked up their families, boarded the steamer, and went upriver to Fortymile. Cherosky and Pitka approached McQuesten for a grubstake or a year's outfit on the prospect they had found at Birch Creek. McQuesten agreed because he wanted information from an unprospected area and hoped to cash in on any new strike.

By fall the families were back downriver at a place approximately thirty miles above what later became Circle City. They had begun building cabins when other miners, drawn by word of gold on Pitka's Bar, showed up. More than a hundred men wintered at the town, which became known as Old Portage. To accommodate that many people Manny Hill built a store. At the first sign of spring Pitka and Cherosky, followed by the hopeful miners, crossed to Birch Creek. Others staked on creeks that proved less rich. Although Pitka and Cherosky had staked claims, they did not know enough about mining and lost them to in-coming white miners. [21]

These mines lay sixty to eighty miles from the Yukon. Eventually a connecting trail wound across swampy muskeg and around small but frequent ponds guarded by clouds of persistent mosquitoes. Roadhouses were built approximately every twelve miles and furnished weary travellers a meal and a floor to sleep on. For the roadhouses and the miners the greatest problem was obtaining supplies from the Yukon. During the winter dog sleds freighted mining equipment and food at seven cents a pound, but in the summer freighting costs jumped to forty cents a pound. [22]

By the first winter the mines on Mastodon, Deadwood, and Mammoth Creeks had yielded $9,000, and by the end of 1895 the output from all the creeks in Birch Creek district was $150,000. [23] Since these mines were even more shallow than those at Fortymile, the miners resorted to open-cut methods. This required that the ground be stripped clear of the overburden and worked from the surface down to bedrock. Then the gold pan, rocker, and sluice box separated the gold from the gravel found at bedrock. Since open-cut mining could only be employed during the summer, the miners mined all summer but spent the winter in town.

In "town" Manny Hill had moved his store downriver to be closer to the creeks. McQuesten joined him later that fall when reports of the other discoveries filtered up to Fortymile. During spring break-up a number of cabins at "Fish Camp" washed away, so McQuesten moved still farther downriver to the present location of Circle. [24] Here Barney Hill, from Seventymile, and Robert English staked out a townsite. [25] Since the miners thought the town was north of the Arctic Circle, they called it Circle City. As at Fortymile, Circle City attracted a settlement of Indians. Some built log cabins on the edges of town and mixed freely with the miners and townspeople. Others, more traditional or less acculturated, lived in tents and semisubterranean houses on an island two miles down the Yukon.

McQuesten, leaving the Fortymile post to Harper, encouraged the development of the Birch Creek diggings. He offered any Fortymile miner outfits on credit, and eighty men accepted his offer. [26] Yet by November 1893 the two major creeks, Mastodon and Deadwood, had been entirely staked. Deadwood Creek, in fact, was known as "Hog-um" Creek because some people hogged it all when they staked it. [27] This temperament contrasted drastically with Fortymile's altruism. Geologist Spurr commented on the "remarkable difference" between the miners at Birch Creek and those at Fortymile. At Birch Creek no one showed the slightest hospitality or friendliness and all seemed to lead cheerless lives. [28]

The rambling town of Circle City lay on the left bank of the Yukon at the beginning of the Yukon Flats. Dog freighter Arthur Walden described it: "A person approaching the town by water for the first time saw a steep bank with small boats of all descriptions moored along the edge. On top of the bank were piles of logs to be whip-sawed, and crude scaffoldings for this purpose, with their accompanying machinery of a man above and a man below. Then came a stretch of fifty feet or more which was the street, and on the other side were rows of log cabins, with a few larger buildings also of logs. These cabins were moss-chinked and dirt-covered, with the exceptions of the warehouses, which were built of corrugated iron. In the mosquito season every cabin had its little smudge in front." [29] In winter it was a "City of Silence", he added, muffled by snow and cold. Yet Englishman Henry De Windt saw only that "Four hundred log buildings line the wide straggling thoroughfares . . .[in a] motley collection of sodden dwellings and dripping roofs." [30] He vehemently objected to Circle City's claim to be "The Paris of Alaska".

By 1896 Circle City had a population of 700 and was the largest settlement on the Yukon and the largest log-cabin city in the world. [31] Jack McQuesten, now fully in the employment of the Alaska Commercial Company, which had purchased his firm, built a two-story log building for the store and a fire-proof, corrugated-iron warehouse. He was also postmaster and banker. Not only did he extend credit, but he had the only safe in town. Yet he did not bask in his popularity for long, for competition quickly arrived. From Fortymile came McQuesten's archrival, John G. Healy, representing the North American Transportation and Trading Company. Healy had the Chicago millionaires Jack and Michael Cudahy of meat-packing fame and P.G. Weare of the Chicago Board of Trade backing his enterprise. With experience gained from the Montana placer camps Healy launched the Yukon's largest steamboat, the Portus B. Weare, and began in 1893 at Fortymile to compete with the Alaska Commercial Company. However, Healy's cranky disposition and stingy, even vindictive methods made him unpopular with the miners at Fortymile and later at Circle City. McQuesten, on the other hand, had extended more then $100,000 in credit in 1894 and had collected nearly all of it by the following fall. [32] Nevertheless, the high prices, poor quality and quantity of supplies, and "greedy" profits of the two commercial companies made several of the miners disgruntled. [33]

Aside from McQuesten's store, Circle's eight to ten dance halls and saloons offered a warm, comfortable place to meet and enjoy the lights and music. Gambling went on all the time. A few professional gamblers arrived from Juneau when they heard of the rush. The gamblers, saloon keepers, and dance-hall girls lived better, dressed better, took life easier, and in a sense were the aristocrats of the camp. [34] Although the dance-hall girls were of easy virtue, the miners treated them with respect and social equality. Since the few respectable women kept to themselves, these women furnished all the miners' feminine society. George Snow, an actor from California, directed theatrical performances in Harry Ash's Opera House, which was actually nothing more than a dance hail.

Visitors reported in garish detail Circle's famed balls or dances. Sometimes they were merely extensions of the "dollar-a-dance" balls nightly staged by the dance halls. Other times they were held for special occasions such as to raise money for a school, hospital, or library. Of all the visitors, Spurr best captured the spirit of these dances: "The couples gyrated in eccentric curves around in obedience to the [director's] cries; the candles flickered in the draft from the open door; and a row of miners too bashful to dance, or who could find no partners, sat on boxes close to the wall, hunched up their legs and spit tobacco juice until the middle of the floor was a sort of an island. In short it was the most brilliant affair Circle City had ever witnessed." [35]

Illustrative of the morals of pre-Klondike society, doors lacked locks, and even gold dust was left in unlocked cabins. Caches of food and supplies along the trail and at the mines remained undisturbed. Claims were bought and sold orally. Robbery was a rarity, murder even more so. There was little open quarreling, but the long winter nights and close contacts developed intense hatreds that were usually settled by not speaking or dividing all jointly owned supplies and moving out.

Two miners' associations arose out of the feeling of brotherhood and loyalty demanded by the close living in a hostile environment. These fraternal organizations provided relief to members in sickness or distress as well as social companionship. The Yukon Order of Pioneers (Y.O.O.P.) was organized in Fortymile in 1893 with McQuesten as president, then reorganized in Circle in 1895. The Miners Association was formed by miners who did not care for the liquor element in the Y.O.O.P. [36] Both associations required an initiation fee, password and good moral conduct. Most miners belonged to both associations. The Miners Association added to the library McQuesten had brought down from Fortymile. Eventually the library reached two thousand volumes. Among them were the Bible, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and such authors as Darwin, Hume, Huxley, and Macaulay. For five dollars each, these books were lent to miners at the diggings to help break their tedium.

At Circle the miners meetings of the California gold rush were refined into institutions more judicial than vigilante in character. [37] If no judicial office existed the miners could elect a judge, officers of the court, and a jury. Under the Oregon Code, which had clarified the California law, the miners' finding would be as binding as those of a regularly constituted court. The procedures were simple. A man with a grievance, either civil or criminal, would post notice to that effect and call a meeting. The miners would then assemble and elect a chairman. The prosecutor presented his case followed by the defendant's. Cross-questioning and speeches in favor of either side would follow. The chairman then called for a vote and the matter was settled. Their decisions were regarded remarkable for their rigorous justness. [38] The usual punishment was banishment from the country regardless of weather and conditions. Generally the meetings ruled in favor of women complaining of breach of promise by their lovers. Thieves were fortunate to escape with a handsled in the winter instead of a hanging. A shooting, although uncommon, usually favored the non-aggressive party, and the miners used self-defense as their rule of thumb. Yet less equitable was one meeting that demanded a prostitute to pay her own court costs, including two gallons of liquor drunk by the jury. Although the miners planned to spend the money with her, wiser heads prevailed and the joke fell through. [39]

By 1897 this institution had outlived its usefulness. The growth of the country and the introduction of a non-productive, adventurous group of men made the miners' meetings a mockery. Eventually the increase of this disreputable class of men in Circle made the productive miner reluctant to settle in town the disputes that had occurred on the creeks. The miners claimed that it was no longer possible to obtain justice there. Another complaint was that although the miners were well-intentioned, they could not decide cases impartially. [40] Arthur Walden cynically reported that after the 1898 gold rush that "civilization, with its religion, laws, disorder, stealing, education, murder, social life, commercial vice, comforts, and broken pledges crept in; justice cost money and disease raged." [41]

Other social institutions sprang up. As more women arrived and families burgeoned, the townspeople built a school and requested a teacher. There were thirty students: four white, twenty Native, and six half-Native. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Anna Fulcomer, arrived from the United States Bureau of Education to serve as the schoolteacher. The schoolhouse had not been completed, and teachers and students spent the first few months bundled up in furs. Since there was a shortage of books, she resorted to frequent use of the blackboard. A few adults received reading lessons in her spare time. The rush to the Klondike shortened her term to only one year. [42] At the same time the Episcopal Church built a mission administered by Reverend Jules L. Prevost and his wife. Eventually government officials made it to the Yukon: United States Commissioner, Inspector of Customs, United States Marshal, Collector of Internal Revenue, and Postmaster.

As in any town, Circle's people provided its flavor and spirit. The famous Tex Rickard, founder of New York's Madison Square Garden, owned a gambling house briefly in Circle. Swiftwater Bill was a dishwasher in a roadhouse at Circle before he became the millionaire Don Juan of the Klondike. Reverend Jules Prevost moved the Yukon Press from Tanana Station (Fort Adams) to Circle. The first dentist in the interior, Benton S. Woods, arrived in 1895 and made his own dentist's chair of twisted saplings. He doubled as Circle's mining recorder. A remarkable forty-five-year-old Mrs. Willis, stout and rugged, pulled her own sled weighing 250 pounds into Circle. She started a laundry and bake shop. Men such as George Matlock, Tom King, and Casper Ellingen appeared briefly as horse freighters, miners, and saloon owners respectively.

William Douglas Johns captured much of the essence of Circle during his year there. He grew up in Chicago, studied law, raised cattle and wheat in North Dakota, and ran a newspaper. Finally the depression of the 1890's pressured him into finding a new lifestyle independent of the whims of business. He arrived in Circle in 1896, staked a claim on Birch Creek, then wintered in Circle City. He rented a small twelve by-fourteen-foot cabin. Although heavy moss between the logs and on the roof insulated the cabin, during the cold months he could scrape the ice from the logs in back of his bunk. His bunk consisted of spruce boughs for a mattress covered with blankets and robes. [43] Prices were similar to Fortymile: flour, $37 per hundred pounds; whiskey $50 a gallon; dogs, $150 each; and firewood, $16 per cord.

One of the first things Johns learned was that "nothing will test out men as to their real character, resourcefulness, courage, endurance of difficulties, kindliness, willingness, and readiness to do their part and not shirk their duties as Life on the Trail in that hard frontier country would do." [44] He saw numerous partners split up under the stress of survival. The usual food was sourdough, beans (known as Yukon strawberries), and coffee. The saloons provided warmth and companionship even for those who did not have money. Women of all classes won his respect as "one phase of the free and easy democracy of the remote frontier". [45] Indians, too, drew his compassion as he observed what "trading companies had 'done' them". [46] Although the Alaskan vote did not count, on election day in 1896 Circle City voted solidly for William Jennings Bryan. A torchlight procession followed led by an illuminated banner showing Bryan. Miners' meetings, even with Johns' background in law, won his approval. Like his colleagues, he was governed by the unwritten but no less binding customs of the Yukon. They contributed to his philosophy, not unlike Frederick Jackson Turner's, that "the frontier life developed a man's self-respect, a regard for the rights of others, and a mutual helpfulness." [47]

Fortymile and Circle City followed the typical pattern of mining camps that began in California. Men outnumbered women; and respectable women were rare. The communities were cosmopolitan; college graduates dug next to illiterates while various nationalities mixed with sourdough Alaskans. The promise of easy gold eventually attracted lawless outcasts, gamblers, and harpies. In these early Alaskan camps they had to solve problems stemming from their unique environment by developing democratic institutions and administering their own brand of justice. [48]

In the fall of 1896 the structure and character of both towns changed drastically The cry, "Gold on the Klondike", emptied the mining camps almost overnight. It marked the end of a frontier and the beginning of a new phase in mining. For once McQuesten, Harper, and May failed to capitalize on the rush. Although Harper and Joe Ladue moved their sawmill from Sixtymile and staked out the Dawson townsite, McQuesten and Mayo met severe cut-throat competition and decided they were getting too old for that kind of life. In 1898 Harper left Alaska and died of tuberculosis in Arizona. McQuesten, known as the "Father of the Yukon", also left Alaska for California in 1898. Only Al Mayo remained to survive a number of subsequent gold rushes. Outliving the other two by twenty years, he died in Rampart, Alaska in 1923. [49]