Digital Bob Archive

The Gold Rush to Atlin in 1899 and 1900 did not reach the proportions that the Klondike Rush had a couple of years earlier, but several thousand men and women did go to Atlin, and many of them went there via the Taku Trail which started at the mouth of the Taku River.

A number of small steamboats were available to take travelers from Juneau and Douglas to the mouth of the river, some 25 miles distant, but beyond that they were on their own. So far as can be discovered, no power boat operated on the Taku in those years. In February, 1899, a man named W. Grey came up from Victoria, B.C., looked over the route and announced that his company would establish a pack horse service, with relay posts along the way, but that did not materialize.

Much of the travel over the Taku Trail - perhaps most of - was during the winter. Fritz Miller and Lockie MacKinnon, two of the first men to begin mining at Atlin, came out to spend Christmas, 1898, at Juneau. On January 6 they and nine other men headed for Atlin over the Taku Trail. Miller had a dog team and carried 1600 pounds on his sled. Each of the other men \"necked\" a sled with 800 pounds on it. That seemed to be a normal load, and they expected to make Atlin in three days from the mouth of the river.

Juneau newspapers enthusiastically promoted the Taku route. The Alaska Miner for many weeks ran a full page map of the Taku Trail and the Atlin District and followed that with a full page advertisement headed: \"Juneau is the Metropolis of Alaska, Supply Depot for Atlin Lake, Porcupine Creek and Yukon Placer Diggings.\"

On January 4, 1899, another Juneau paper, The Alaska Mining Record, admonished: \"It is very necessary that the Juneau Chamber of Commerce establish a bureau of information in Seattle immediately. Every steamer will be loaded with passengers going to the new gold fields. The businessmen of Skagway have men in Seattle talking up the merits of their trail and denouncing the Taku Trail. The railroad at Skagway also is putting out misleading information.\"

The railroad was, of course, the White Pass. Construction had begun from Skagway the previous May but in January and February, 1899, it was still struggling to reach the summit at White Pass. Nevertheless, it would carry goldseekers to the end of track, and after it reached Bennett, at the head of the lake of the same name, those bound for Atlin could take a boat most of the rest of the way.

A war of words soon developed between The Skaguay News (as that town then spelled its name) and the Juneau papers. The former wrote sneering editorials and news stories about \"the alleged Taku Trail,\" and called it \"a dangerous wilderness in winter and a mosquito plantation in summer.\" The Juneau papers retaliated with stories headlined \"The Awful Terrors of the Skagway Trail.\"