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Yukon Nuggets

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1907

McClintock Bay

The pleasant bay and river that flows into it, on Marsh Lake is named for a member of Britain's Royal Navy, Francis McClintock, who solved the mystery of the missing Franklin expedition.

The greatest Arctic expedition of all time…

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1909

H.C. Barley, White Pass Photographer

Yukon history owes a lot to Harry C. Barley, a man most people have probably never heard of. Like other photographers who made their living when the Yukon was young, Barley toiled in the shadows of greatness. In this case,…

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1909

Jeff

July 1909. The dog days of summer were upon Yukon once more. Jeff didn't have much to do since his work was usually done in the winter. So, in the heat of the mid-July sun, Jeff was usually found lying…

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1910

Michael Heney

Michael James Heney, the son of an Irish immigrant who farmed in the upper Ottawa Valley, was not cut out to be a farmer. A good thing for the Yukon. Otherwise, the White Pass and Yukon Railway would likely never…

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1910

The Zust

It’s not often that a car you probably never heard of may well be the most famous automobile ever to hit the Yukon. Ever heard of a Zust? No! Me neither, until I read about the greatest automobile race in…

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1916

Alex Van Bibber

Many Yukoners have fond memories of Alex Van Bibber. Mine is watching him take Babe Southwick’s dog team around the 14-mile course on the final two days of the 1965 Sourdough Rendezvous dog-sled race.

Babe was Alex’s sister-in-law.…

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1918

S.S. Tutshi

She’s a burned out hulk now, and her ruins lie in Carcross where she was built. In her day, the steamer Tutshi was a class-act of the Yukon riverboat fleet. The S.S. Tutshi was one of the largest riverboats…

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1918

The Sinking of the Sophia

It was the worst disaster the Yukon had ever known. The elite of the mining and transportation community, on board the Princess Sophia, were lost in the ice-cold waters of the Inside Passage, October 23, 1918.

The Princess Sophia left…

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1920

First Aircraft in Whitehorse

In June 1920, Captain Douglas of the U.S. Air Force and Captain Leroyer of the Canadian Air Board arrived in Whitehorse. Both came with the authority of the US and Canadian governments to present a plan for a record-breaking airplane…

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1922

Erastus Brainerd

Seattle was not destined to be the major jumping-off place for miners heading to the Klondike gold fields. San Francisco, or even Vancouver, should have been, or could have been. Prior to 1897, San Francisco dominated maritime trade with Alaska…

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1922

The First Dam on the Yukon River

There was a time when the Yukon River was the Yukon’s highway and the river boats were the life blood of the economy. The boats delivered everything from soup to nuts and bolts from the railhead at Whitehorse to…

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1926

Bill Robinson

A small townsite on the Carcross road is named after a big man. Weighing in at over 300 pounds, Stikine Bill gave the community of Robinson its name.

William Robinson was a railroad man who was born in North Anson,…

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1927

William Dall

He was the Dean of Alaskan explorers. But his extraordinary life was - to him - ordinary. William Dall was born in 1845 and began his scientific career as a member of the Scientific Corps of the Alaskan Western Union…

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1928

George Johnson’s Car

You have to wonder why someone would start a car dealership in a country where roads were - at best - thinly disguised wagon trails. Just as curious is why someone would buy one. Both events happened in the Yukon…

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1928

John Conrad

In the early 1900s, John Conrad, an American financier, took a bold million dollar move and consolidated gold and silver claims on Montana Mountain, which overlooks Carcross and Windy Arm. With the value of silver rising, development of the…

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1929

Charlie Taylor

Many years ago, on a journey down the Yukon River in the company of Cam Cameron and Charlie Taylor, I heard first-hand many of the stories lived by these two unforgettable Yukoners. Both are gone now, but their memories…

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1932

SS Baychimo

Al Oster has written a lot of story songs about the Yukon. One that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves is about the Ghost ship of the Arctic. It was called the SS Baychimo.

Back in the…

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1935

Ephraim J. Hamacher

Most of the photographers who took the Klondike challenge of 1898 travelled all the way to Dawson City. When the rush was over, most left the land of gold forever. Ephraim Hamacher did neither.

He was born in Kitchener, Ontario,…

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1936

Riverboats as Archaeology

You wouldn’t think the Yukon river-boat days are gone long enough to attract the attention of archeologists. Nevertheless, a British Columbia archaeologist, sponsored by the Institute of nautical archeology at Texas A & M University, is conducting a…

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1936

Sinking of the first SS Klondike

Once in the mid 70’s I took a boat trip on the Yukon River with G.I. Cameron. The former mountie who had been stationed for many years at Fort Selkirk was a wealth of knowledge about the…

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1936

The Gleaner

The sternwheeler, the Gleaner, a three decked boat more than one hundred feet long, could carry 150 passengers and a lot of freight. Yet the river boat never ran the Yukon River. Instead, she operated in the Yukon southern…

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