1958 Yukon Nuggets

The Copper Slab

Next time you visit MacBride Museum, or if you are just out for a walk along Front Street, look at a big green rock standing tall outside the old log Telegraph Office on the corner of First and Steele Street. It’s big, and it is pure, 100% copper.

The copper slab arrived at its present location from the White River area, in what could only be described as a community project without parallel. Its existence had been known since May 1905, though there were rumours going back to 1891.

In 1953, prospector Clem Emminger trekked into the area, about 30 miles off the Alaska Highway, and brought back a small sample along with news of just how big the slab was. Three tons of pure copper. No one was more excited than Bill MacBride, the Yukon ’s foremost historian and booster of his day.

In 1954, he helped form a copper nugget committee of five to find out how he could bring the slab to Whitehorse for display at the MacBride Museum. The committee consisted of prominent Yukoners such as Bill Emery, John Phelps, Dorothy Scott, Jim Whyard and Roy Minter.

Believe it or not, they could not just drag the slab out of the bush. It took four years of investigation to discover who owned the nugget. Finally, they decided it was on Crown Land and that no one had a claim to it. Then the committee had to convince the Department of Northern Affairs to let them have it. In 1958, Northern Affairs agreed to donate the slab to the Yukon Historical Society.

Then, the committee set about retrieving the copper slab. Fifteen people were involved in the recovery mission. At 7am on April 22, 1958, the group headed into the rough White River bush country to drag the copper out. They included big game guides Buck Dickson and Carl Chambers and federal game warden Joe Langevin. Alaska Highway maintenance people provided cat-skinner Dave Hume – and his cat.

It took five days to drag the slab to the highway, load it onto a flat-bed, and drive it 250 miles to its final resting place at the McBride Museum. It arrived on Sunday, April 27th, 1958.

Today, it sits proudly at the museum site, complete with a plaque dedicated to the pioneer prospectors who staked copper claims on the White River from 1900 to 1958. Among the early prospectors named is Frank Miles, the adoptive father of William MacBride.

By the way, these native copper 'nuggets' are unusual, and have no market value because they are so hard, and there are so few that setting up milling machinery would be impractical. However, as a museum piece, it is priceless.

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.