Digital Bob Archive

Many Juneauites were involved in gold prospecting and mining in the Yukon Valley for a dozen years before the Klondike discovery in the summer of 1896. The early prospectors scattered along a dozen or more Yukon tributaries and found what they called \"fine gold\" which was gold dust rather than nuggets. The first coarse gold discovery was made by a former Juneau man, Howard Franklin (Franklin Street was named for him), on the Fortymile River in 1886. This resulted in the first sizeable mining camp in the Yukon Valley, which they named Forty Mile. Many of the miners began to winter there.

Forty Mile was served by river steamboats that came up from St. Michael, but of course only in the summer months. The town was in Canada, in what was then Northwest Territories, but it apparently was not until the winter of 1895-96 that the Canadian government arranged for any winter mail delivery to that northern outpost.

In the meanwhile another important gold discovery was made in 1893 on Birch Creek, some distance down the Yukon. This resulted in an American mining camp, Circle City, later shortened simply to Circle. The Alaska Commercial Company, which had a large store at Forty Mile, also opened one at Circle City and got permission from the Post Office Department to transport mail, at its own expense, from Juneau to both places.

About that time the Canadian government decided to send a winter mail to Forty Mile. It hired T. Constantine Healy, a son of John J. Healy who had established a trading post at Dyea, for the job. Healy and Fred Gasch, Jr., left Juneau in mid-December with a 65-pound sack of mail that had come up from Victoria. They went by boat to Dyea, then started up the Chilkoot Trail.

In the meanwhile, Jimmy Jackson, a Juneau Native was hired by the A.C. Company to carry one sack of letters and two of papers to Forty Mile. He also left in mid-December but used the ancient Tlingit route up the Taku River and across to Atlin Lake and Tagish. His nephew and another Native, Chilkat Bob, went with him. Two white men tagged along, against Jackson's advice.

The weather was severe and both carriers had trouble. The Healy party cached the mail at the top of the pass and went back to Dyea. It snowed steadily for some days and when they returned they could not find the mail in several days of digging. It did not get delivered until after the spring thaw.

The Jackson party had to camp for eleven days because of wind roaring down the river. Then the white men could not keep up. Jackson went back for them once but eventually left them behind and they were assumed to have frozen to death. Near Atlin Lake Jackson cached the two sacks of newspapers. They ran short of food and nearly starved, but after two months on the trail they reached Forty Mile. The miners weren't happy with them. Relatively few of the miners got letters but all were hungry for the news that was in that cache of papers.