Digital Bob Archive

The Taku route to Atlin was heavily promoted by Juneau newspapers in 1899 and much of their effort consisted of grabbing travelers and getting testimonials from them. The Alaska Mining Record on January 4,1899, for example, reported that three men named Saunders, Robertson and Wright had just arrived in Juneau. \"They left Discovery City near Atlin on Monday, December 26, and arrived in Juneau the Thursday following,\" said the paper. \"They did not travel at night and spent a total of 38 hours tramping. Mr. Saunders went in via the Skagway-Bennett route last summer and is now an ardent advocate of the Taku Trail.\"

Despite that kind of advertising, however, the Taku route gradually lost out to the one via Skagway. One reason for this may have been the lack of facilities for travelers, especially at the mouth of the Taku River. Boat service between that point and Juneau was very irregular, and when Taku winds blew down the valley, boats stayed out of the inlet entirely.

Summer travel had its hazards, too. In June, 1899, Mike Ryan and Colin McKinnon came over the trail to the mouth of the Silver Salmon where they built a raft.
The raft hit a sweeper and broke up and when McKinnon reached shore he could find nothing of Ryan and finally came to town with another party of travelers. Two weeks later George Rudd and Leonard Edgren were prospecting along the river when they heard moaning in a clump of brush. They found Ryan, almost naked, near starvation and too feeble to get up off the ground. He finally recovered in a Juneau hospital.

Over the years several roads and at least two railroads have been proposed for the Taku Valley. Early in 1899 an engineer named T.J. Jones surveyed a townsite some four miles below the mouth of the Taku where, he told the Alaska Mining Record, there was a fine anchorage with 30 fathoms of water and a good dock site.

The townsite had been located for the Packard Lake Teslin railway, Engineer Jones stated. An eastern syndicate representing English capital was enroute to the site, accompanied by a survey party. A route would be surveyed up the Taku to the Silver Salmon, across to Teslin Lake and reaching the Yukon River at the mouth of the Hootalinqua.

\"The difficulty attendant upon the ice discharge from Foster Glacier (today known as Taku Glacier) will be overcome by steel transfer boats which will convey trains intact from landing to landing, thus giving unimpeded connections the year around,\" the newspaper said. It went on:

\"Arrangements have been completed and bids for contracts opened for the construction at the new townsite of a spacious wharf and warehouses that will accommodate the ocean steamers. Two large hotels are also contemplated, and without question there will be an active little city at Taku Landing ere many months roll by.\"

More than a thousand months have rolled by since the Mining Record published that pipe dream and there may be less travel in the Taku Valley today than there was in 1899.