Category: White Pass & Yukon Route

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George Little


Happy Birthday to “the kid” as he was known, born on this day, November 9, 1878 in Atwood Ontario. He was the mail carrier for the route Skagway to Dawson.

Samuel Graves, President of White Pass, praised “Mr. Little” in 1903 for work as second officer on the Columbian event near Dawson. (White Pass purchased the Columbian in 1901 but the Columbian was caught in Dawson for the winter in 1903 when navigation closed with no warning. It wintered in the ice in front of the BYN docks, receiving “nominal damage” in the spring.)

Soon after, George became tired of the hustle and bustle of the Yukon Gold Rush and headed for the Bulkley Valley in British Columbia. As he gazed over the beautiful Skeena and Kitsumkallum Valleys, decked in spring finery, he knew this was what he was searching for and stayed. When the government threw this land open for sale in 1905 George Little, the Founder of Terrace, staked his claim on acres of the heavily wooded timberland, including the site on which Terrace now stands today.

City of Terrace website; “On the White Pass Payroll” by Graves, 1908

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Henry Cross


Henry was born in 1844 in Germany. He shows up in the 1881 census as a miner in the Cassiar District, and then he came to Skagway and worked on the railroad. Unfortunately he got caught between cars and was crushed to death on this day, November 7, 1901 and is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery. Another White Pass fatality.
Seen above is a great photo of a train accident, though not from Skagway.

Skagway Death Record

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John Nicholas Hansen


John Hansen, known as “Nels” was born on this day, November 1, 1874 in Bornholm, Denmark. He came to Skagway in 1897 and married Ethel Mae Feero about 1907. His three children, John Egbert born 1908, Aden Nels born 1909, Frank born 1917 and William born 1919 were all born in Skagway and stayed here most of their lives.

Nels worked as the White Pass bridge foreman and as a fisherman. He was a member of the Arctic Brotherhood and was Skagway councilman from 1920 to 1922. Nels and Ethel were in Skagway for the 1929 census but I have no idea what became of them after that.

1910,1920, 1929 censuses; 1915 directory; 1909 AB book; rootsweb posting; WW1 registration.

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Henry Bailey


Captain Bailey was a captain for one of the White Pass & Yukon Route Steamships. Born in 1865 in Wisconsin, he died on this day, October 27, 1919 in Mayo, Yukon Territory of stomach ulcers. His body was sent to Seattle for burial. He came to Skagway in 1897 and worked as a laborer for White Pass and continued to work until his death.

Sternwheelers were an ideal vessel for the Yukon River’s shallow, narrow waters. The stern mount made for a narrow vessel, and protected the paddle wheel itself from snags and sweepers. The flat bottom gull allowed for little draft, even with heavy cargoes. The paddlewheel helped grounded vessels off sandbars by reversing and washing sand away from the hull: a vessel could also approach shallow waters stern-first and dredge a channel for itself. The sternwheeler could land practically anywhere since docks were not necessary.

Just after the railway reached Whitehorse in 1900, WP&YR set up a marine division called British Yukon Navigation. BYN built a shipyard in Whitehorse and a repair yard in Dawson City. Among the first vessels built was the Whitehorse, seen above, the “old grey mare” which served for 53 years – the longest continuous service of any vessel on the Yukon River.

As the primary means of transportation and communication in the Yukon for the first part of this century, the paddle-wheeler was an integral part of the life of Yukon people. When the last of the boats were pulled from the river in 1955, a way of life ended.

1900 Skagway census; Canadian Navy website; Minter fonds at Yukon Archives.

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Engine 61


There are very few photos of Engine 61, so I have been told, so here is one of Theresa Weise about 1920 posing on the front of it. The engine was purchased new and built in 1900 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It was a 2-8-0 wheel configuration and weighed 17,600 lbf.
Here is a description from a railfan’s site: “This single Consolidation had the same power dimensions as the converted #56 (Locobase 10678), but was a road engine. Like most of the WP & Y locomotives, 61 had an outside frame (to make room for the Stephenson link motion inside) and it stayed in service an equivalent amount of time before retirement in the early 1940s.”
Sadly it was used as riprap along the Skagway River in 1949.
I believe it was John Bush, who worked in Skagway as the head of the train works here, who had it retrieved and moved to Skagway Shops in 1990. He was involved in trading abandoned narrow gauge trucks (railroad car wheels) to other narrow gauge train companies. He was also responsible for trading these trucks to a town in the midwest for Engine 69, which eventually made its way to Skagway. When White Pass traded for this engine, it had been sitting in the town center of some little town in Nebraska (?) for many decades and the town was quite attached to it, so it was moved out of there under cover of darkness and hidden in Washington State for a couple of years until it was brought up to Skagway.
Anyway, the fate of little engine 61 is not as lucky, it was sold to Mid-West Locomotive & Machine Works in 2007. Narrow gauge engines and parts are getting difficult to find these days.

photo courtesy of John Weise. Wikipedia for engine info; steamlocomotive.com

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White Pass workers


Here is a great shot of White Pass & Yukon Route workers about 1920 with their little work train cars.

Photo courtesy of John Weise.

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John Weise


John Weise emigrated to St Paul Minnesota from Brightling, Sussex England where he was born on September 29, 1872. At the time he emigrated his name was Jesse Funnell. When he moved to Skagway in 1898 he changed his name to John Weise. He may have gone to Atlin to mine but later worked in Skagway as a bartender for the Board of Trade Saloon.
He also worked as a section foreman for White Pass. He married Theresa, a cook for White Pass and they lived in Skagway when their son, John was born in 1915. In 1916-17 they moved to Whitehorse when Prohibition closed the bars in Skagway.
John’s grandson, also John Weise, forwarded the photo above which he believes is his grandfather – a dapper fellow! I will post some more of his photos in upcoming blogs – some great ones of Engine 67, Engine 61 and some workers on White Pass using work carts/Casey cars which I have never seen before.

John Weiss; 1920 census.

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George Herman Miller


Mr. Miller came to Skagway around 1912 and then worked for White Pass as an auditor by 1915. He was born on this day, September 2, 1873 in Canada but by the 1910 census he was living in Maryland, his parents were from Germany. He registered for World War One while here and was still here in 1923. During the Crash he lost everything and was later seen on the streets of Vancouver begging.

So apropos of nothing, here is a picture of a girl wearing a rhubarb leaf.

1920 census; 1915 and 1923 Polk’s directory; WW1 Registration