Digital Bob Archive

The Alaska Free Press Juneau's first newspaper, established 100 years ago this month, got its first big news story only a few weeks later when it was able to announce the first discovery in the Yukon drainage of what the miners termed \"coarse\" gold. In other words, nuggets of gold. They had been recovering gold dust from the sands of the Yukon tributaries ever since 1880, and searching for coarse gold. The new discovery was made on the Fortymile River by Howard Franklin, for whom Franklin Street in Juneau was named.

Since its founding, Juneau had been the outfitting point for an ever increasing number of placer miners going to the Yukon country. One of them told the editor of the Free Press early in 1887: \"I'll try the Yukon again next summer. It's a tough trip but I don't know of any quicker or easier way to make a thousand or two dollars by next fall\" With bacon at 15 cents a pound on the Juneau market, choice fresh beef at two-bits and corned beef at half that, a thousand dollars was real money.

News of the discovery on the Fortymile dribbled into Juneau in tantalizing bits. Arthur Harper, Yukon trader and, incidentally, the grandfather of Connie Paddock of Juneau, hired a man named Williams to carry to Juneau a letter addressed to his partner, Jack McQuesten, who was in San Francisco buying supplies for the next season. Harper, foreseeing an influx of miners, wanted the supply orders increased. Williams died near the top of Chilkoot Pass and the letter, with other mail, was buried in the snow.

An Indian boy who was with Williams made it to Dyea and on to Juneau. He spoke little English but was able to relate that gold had been discovered and to show, with pieces of coal, how big the nuggets were. But he didn't know where they had been found! Frustration of gigantic proportions prevailed among the miners wintering in Juneau, but finally the lost mail was recovered and the word was soon out.

There was an immediate boom in the supply business in Juneau and in transportation to Dyea, the beginning of the trail to the Yukon. There had been perhaps 200 miners in the Yukon Valley in years past; an estimated 2000 headed there in the next few years.

The town of Forty Mile sprang up on Canadian soil at the mouth of the Fortymile River. It was the first real town on the Yukon and soon had stores, saloons, an opera house and a fraternal organization, the Yukon Order of Pioneers.

The influx of miners and prospectors soon brought other discoveries, including one on Birch Creek in American territory, resulting in the founding of another new town, Circle City. But until after the Klondike discovery in 1896 and the founding of Skagway and Dawson, Juneau remained the jumping off place and trade center for the upper Yukon Valley.