In his book “The White Pass” by Graves, the first 1/3 of the book deals with the intrigue and planning that went into creating the railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse. British investors had for many years researched the task and had sent various engineers and financiers to Skagway to review the situation. In the famous meeting of Michael J. Heney with the British investors, they came to believe that with the right men the task was possible. In 1897 there were actually 32 proposals to the Canadian Government to build the railroad. By the start of construction there were three companies that were organized to build the rail line. But on this day, July 30, 1898, the charter rights and concessions of the three companies were acquired by the White Pass & Yukon Railway Company Limited, a new company organized in London.
So, when I worked at White Pass (in marketing) I discovered that the true name is actually White Pass & Yukon Route Railway (note the use of the ampersand, not the word “and” ). But the legal name is still the Pacific Arctic Railway and Navigation Company, often referred to as PARN. Now I am sure I will be corrected here, as it is confusing.
111 years old today!
Happy Birthday to White Pass! The 110-mile White Pass and Yukon Route railroad (WP&YR) was completed with the driving of the golden spike on July 29, 1900, in Carcross, Yukon Territory. The railroad connected the deep water port of Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and beyond to northwest Canada and interior Alaska. Built in 1898 during the Klondike gold rush, construction of the WP&YR was considered an impossible task, but it was literally blasted through coastal mountains in only 26 months, from May 28, 1989, to July 29, 1900.
The railroad was built to replace narrow, dangerous White Pass Trail, also known as Dead Horse Trail, which was taken by prospectors heading from Skagway to the Yukon and Atlin goldfields. Each prospector was required to carry one year’s provisions, or about 2,000 pounds of food and supplies, on the trek north. Because a prospector usually could not carry more than 80 pounds at up the trail at one time, each individual had to climb the mountain 25 or more times. To ease the load, nearly 4,000 horses were brought in. The prospectors worked or starved all but a few horses to death, giving the route the nickname “Dead Horse Trail.” The completion of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad provided an easier route for crossing the mountains, and prospectors and others thereby escaped the backbreaking work of transporting required supplies to the goldfields.
The $10 million project was the product of British financing, American engineering, and Canadian contracting. Tens of thousands of men and some 450 tons of explosives overcame harsh and challenging climate and geography to create “the railway built of gold.” The railroad climbed almost 3,000 feet in just 20 miles and featured steep grades of up to 3.9%, cliff-hanging turns of 16 degrees, two tunnels, and numerous bridges and trestles. The steel cantilever bridge was the tallest of its kind in the world when it was constructed in 1901. To keep British backers of the project appraised of the railroad’s progress, both during and after construction, Barley was hired as a full-time photographer.
In the early 1900s, the WP&YR held a near monopoly on traffic to the goldfields, slowing much of the travel on alternate routes into the Yukon. One such route was the 300-mile Dalton Trail, which connected Pyramid Harbor near Haines on the Pacific Coast, to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River. The WP&YR route began in Skagway, with stops along the route at what were originally major construction camps, including Log Cabin, Bennett, Carcross, and Robinson, before ending at Whitehorse. Today the WP&YR is Alaska’s most popular shore excursion, operating on the first 66 miles of the original 110-mile line (Skagway, Alaska, to Carcross Y.T.) and carrying over 300,000 passengers during the May to September tourism season. The narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, a designation shared with the Panama Canal, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty.
Seen above is the bridge over the Nares River from Lake Bennett to Lake Nares at Carcross. The spike ceremony happened just in front of this bridge, where the photographer is standing.
Fisk’s Cut
Near Tunnel Mountain and Slippery Rock there is a famous cut in the rock called “Fisk’s Cut”. All that we know of the tunnel foreman was his name, Mr. Fisk. He was able to blast a nice tunnel which is still used many times a day!
Seen above is a scene of the area that they worked on near Slippery Rock. Looks slippery!
Minter p. 239
John O’Neil
John O’Neil worked for White Pass and was struck by a falling rock up at White Pass and died. His death record said his complexion was sandy, his height was 5’6″, and his weight was 140 lb. He was born in 1867 and died on this day, July 20, 1898 and was buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery on the 23rd of July.
This Barley photo shows workers removing rubble after a blast. White Pass still uses explosives to remove hazardous rock, their storage shed for explosives is suitably up in the mountains near the track but far from mischievous fingers.
Skagway death/coroners/probate records.
Percy Fremlin Scharschmidt
Growing up in Southern California, my family and I would visit Yosemite every summer. There was a famous ranger there named Scharschmidt, but I don’t know if he was related to the Percy Scharschmidt that was here in the Gold Rush.
Percy was born on this day, July 19, 1867 in Lewisham, England. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1887 and served with the 10th Battalion in the Riel Rebellion before settling in Cumberland in 1892 with a pharmacy.
His biography at Cumberland Heritage site says that he worked as a Superintendent of the “Yukon” railroad, but I have no record of that. He was the editor of the Bennett Sun from May 24, 1899 through 1901. He retired to the Comox Valley (on Vancouver Island) and was involved in politics there, passing away in 1932. Seen above is his house which is on the Cumberland walking tour of historic houses.
library.state.ak; wikipedia; Minter; Cumberland Heritage site.
Edward Frederick Doree
E.F. Doree is quite famous or infamous among union and union-busters. Edward was born in Philadelphia in 1889 to Swedish immigrants Frederick and Maria. The family moved to Coeur d’Alene and from there to Skagway after 1900. Frederick and his son Edward worked for White Pass and lived in company housing. Edward had 5 siblings ranging in age from 3 to 16 – Edward was the oldest. According to his daughter who wrote a book in 2004, here is the story:
One day there was a railroad accident and Edward lost the fingers of one hand. He was fired. His parents requested some compensation from White Pass and instead were told to clear out of White Pass housing, they no longer worked for the railroad.
This created a fire in the heart of Edward Frederick Doree. He moved to Washington and became an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World more commonly known as the Wobblies. He once mocked the idea of rural work as wholesome and benevolent with the famous joke that in the wheat states, the “eight-hour work day” prevailed—“eight hours in the forenoon, eight hours in the afternoon.”
The IWW fought for the rights of workers—common laborers, migrants, immigrants, black workers—unprotected by the craft unions. In the face of beatings, kidnappings, and lynchings by vigilantes, company detectives, and hired guns, the Wobblies organized in mining and lumber camps, the wheat fields, on docksides and in textile factories. A meteoric career from its beginnings in 1906, the IWW arose with free speech fights, peaked with a membership of over 100,000 workers in 1917, and was devastated in 1918 by the imprisonment of its leadership for violations of wartime legislation.
Doree was a key IWW organizer, union head, writer, and defense committee officer who experienced all of this first-hand. From 1918 to 1922, Doree was one of over a hundred Wobblies imprisoned in Leavenworth Penitentiary when the government cracked down on these activists.
Doree wrote many letters and his writings provide a different view of American labor history. The most interesting irony is that while White Pass saved the money to compensate the Doree family in early 1900’s, by their actions, labor gained a hero. Thousands of companies and millions of workers from that time to present have benefited from the simple rights that unions won for the worker. I will classify Doree as another one of Skagway’s heroes, despite the lack of recognition he has received.
Wikipedia; “A Wobbly Life: IWW Organizer E.F. Doree”, 2004, by Ellen Doree Rosen
Otto H. Partridge
Otto was born in 1857 on the Isle of Man. He emigrated from England to San Francisco. In 1897, he heard the stories of men walking off ships in San Francisco with suitcases full of gold from the Yukon gold fields. He had boat building skills that would be valuable in the north so at age 42 he set off for Skagway, Alaska.
He is said to have smuggled $20,000 to Lake Bennett in a bale of oakum.
Otto crossed the Chilkoot Pass and traveled to Bennett, British Columbia. Bennett was the start of the lake and river system that led to Dawson City. Here he worked as general manager for the Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation Company. With the extension of the White Pass & Yukon Route railway to Whitehorse in 1900, Otto moved to Milhaven Bay on Bennett Lake near Carcross where he set up a sawmill and supplied railroad ties to the WP&YR. His wife Kate joined him here. They lived on a houseboat and Kate spent her time cultivating flower and vegetable gardens which flourished in the intense northern sunlight.
Otto’s sawmill closed shortly after the end of the gold rush and he turned his interest to mining. In 1911, he started a mining operation in partnership with Stanley McLellan and Lugwig Swanson. He called the mine Ben-My-Chree. The name in Manx spoken on the Isle of Man, translates to “girl of my heart”, and was a tribute to Kate. The small mine employed up to sixty men, but was short-lived as an avalanche roared down the mountain burying the mine and tragically killing Stanley McLellan and his wife.
After the accident, the Partridges stopped mining and built a homestead, also named Ben-My-Chree, in the spectacular wilderness valley just 106 km south of the Yukon border. In the rich glacial silt they cultivated two acres of formal flower gardens in this most unlikely setting. Forty varieties of flowers flourished here and grew to amazing heights. The delphiniums were ten feet high, the pansies and poppies were five inches in diameter.
In 1912, sternwheelers began stopping at Ben-My-Chree to bring mail and supplies and to stock up on fresh vegetables from the Partridge’s garden.
In 1916, Otto entered into an agreement with the British Yukon Navigation Company to bring tourists down the lake from Carcross to visit the gardens. Word quickly spread and soon steamers carried 9,000 passengers annually to Ben-My-Chree. The scenery at Ben-My-Chree entranced visitors. The combination of towering snowcapped mountains, the rushing glacial river, the long white sandy delta, the turquoise lake, and the incredible gardens were breathtaking.
A houseboy received visitors at the dock while Kate, dressed in long formal wear, welcomed visitors at the garden gate. In the drawing room, Kate entertained with organ music. Otto conducted tours of the gardens and, a gifted storyteller, he captivated his audiences with stories from the gold rush days.
During the 1920’s Ben-My-Chree was considered a key place to visit among the social elite of that time period. Many wealthy people including the Prince of Wales, President Roosevelt, Lord and Lady Byng, and numerous silent picture movie stars made the long trip.
Otto died at age 73 on this day, June 28, 1930 and Kate a few months later at the age of 77. They are buried in the Whitehorse Pioneer Cemetery.
They are pictured above.
Martinsen Trail to North Star Gold; What Lies Beneath website for the Whitehorse Cemetery.
Frank Brown
From what I can tell there were at least three Frank Browns in Skagway. Frank W. Brown died on this day, June 19, 1907 in Skagway. Frank Edward Brown worked for White Pass in 1920. One Frank Brown was deported from Skagway after the Soapy roundup in 1898. But the most interesting story about Frank Brown is the one from 1988.
On January 26, 1988, the motorvessel Frank H. Brown, a 1965 Canadian cargo and fuel carrier was docked at the White Pass dock. This was one of the first container ships created but it must have lacked some safety features which are common today. That morning someone noticed the smell of gasoline and discoloration of the water around the stern tank of the ship. This tank had capacity of 124,000 gallons of fuel. Actions were immediately initiated to offload the tank to shoreside facilities. At the onset of the incident the wind was calm. However, by 10 a.m. the wind had built to nine knots from the north and continued increasing throughout the day. Response crews from the White Pass Transportation Co. initially boomed off the vessel but shortly thereafter opened the boom to avoid a fire hazard, on the advice of the U.S. Coast Guard. It was estimated that 2800 gallons of gasoline spilled into the harbor. Today Skagway still receives thousands of gallons of fuel and transfers it to fuel trucks which take the fuel to Whitehorse every day.
Seen above is the predecessor to the Brown, the Clifford Rogers as it unloads and loads containers (also invented by White Pass) to be loaded onto the train. This photo is from 1957 but is essentially the same as it was into the 1980’s.
USCG district 17. Government report 6547 online.
Albert B. Towne
Albert Towne was born on this day, June 7, 1842 in New York. He seems to have passionately wanted to be a soldier! Although he joined the military almost as soon as the America Civil War began, it appears health reasons-most likely chronic asthma- caused farmer Town’s initial enrollments to be short lived.
However, by persistently reenlisting he, four units and three service arms later, successfully completed the War. Along the way his name was noted not only as Albert B. Town (the spelling used by the veteran on post war documents, but also Albert B. Towne and Albert S. Town. Whether these changes were conscious attempts to conceal previous enlistments or merely clerical errors is not known.
Following the War the 6’2” blue eyed Town returned to Michigan, married and resided in Monterey and Grand Rapids Michigan before moving to Washington state and then ultimately to Skagway, Alaska.
It is hard to grasp that there were several members of the Grand Army of the Republic that lived in Skagway. He worked as a baggageman for White Pass on Moore’s Wharf.
On June 14, 1914 this “minister of the gospel” was dead from a sudden bout of cerebral apoplexy (stroke). At passing the 76 year-old former cavalryman/infantryman/artilleryman was receiving a $25 per month in Civil War pension. He is buried in the Snohomish GAR cemetery.
1905 directory, 1915 directory; rootsweb; Civil War vets of Washington State online.
White Pass Construction
On this day, May 27, 1898, after years of planning and financial consideration by British investors, White Pass & Yukon Route started building the railroad over the White Pass to Whitehorse. I don’t remember ever seeing a ceremony to commemorate the start on that day, I think they just started. They encountered some difficulty in building the line along the base of the cliff where it is located now, because local landowners and speculators had bought up the land thinking they would cash in. So two weeks later, despite local objections, 500 workers started laying the track down Broadway at night and in the morning of June 15, 1898 the town awoke to find the deed was already done.
This demonstrated two things, that Michael J. Heney was a doer, that local objections were of no concern to him, and second that with enough manpower and money, White Pass was above any minor obstacles. These characteristics would later become evident in their dealings with accidents and local problems (Soapy?).