Digital Bob Archive

A road from Taku Inlet to Atlin, proposed by the Atlin Chamber of Commerce in 1905, wasn't even surveyed, but in 1913 and 1914 there was another proposal, this time not for a wagon road but for a railroad, one that would reach not only Atlin but would hook up with a transcontinental rail line.

George W. Mitchell, a Canadian who had been connected with the British Columbia Development Association at the time of the building of the White Pass Railway, was the first to suggest a railroad from Taku Inlet. Mitchell seems to have had connections with English financiers, and some sources gave him credit for interesting the Close Bros. of London in the White Pass line.

Early in 1913 Mitchell enlisted as his local agent Percy Pond, a Juneau photographer who had been promoting communications links with Atlin ever since 1898. In that year he had headed a Juneau Chamber of Commerce party that made a reconnaissance survey for a trail to Atlin. In April, 1914, Pond was back in the Taku Valley, this time with a civil engineer, F.J. Wettrick, to make a preliminary survey for Mitchell's railroad.

According to a contemporary Juneau newspaper article, \"At the boundary the railroad will connect with the line to Atlin and Lake Teslin, where it will connect with a line of river steamers.\" An unwary reader might have assumed from the story that trains were already running on the Atlin line. Actually, not a single rail had yet been laid.

There was more: \"Another branch will run in a southerly direction to connect with the Grand Trunk Pacific. For the present the water terminus will be at Taku Inlet, but it is not improbable that eventually it will be built to Juneau. \"The Grand Trunk Pacific was the transCanada rail line that had its western terminus at Prince Rupert.

Percy Pond was described by the newspaper as \"a happy man,\" and he was running over with enthusiasm. \"The construction of the line will open an immense trade territory to Juneau,\" he told the Chamber of Commerce. If anyone pointed out that although the territory was immense, its population was minute, it was overlooked by the newspapers.

About the time Percy Pond was tramping along the banks of the Taku with a surveyor's rod, in 1914, articles of incorporation were being flied both at Olympia, Washington, and in the office of Secretary of Alaska Charles E. Davidson at Juneau. Incorporators were Willis B. Herr, F.G. Bayley and Worral Wilson, all of Seattle, and the initial stock issue was to be for $300,000. Attorney W.S. Bayless was the Juneau legal agent.

The company's prospectus was considerably more modest than had been announced in 1913. It was simply \"to build a railroad from Taku Inlet to the Canadian border to connect with the Atlin Railway Company's proposed line.\" G.W. Mitchell, the active head of the company, visited Juneau in July, 1914, while the Princess Sophia was in port. He was enroute to Atlin via Skagway. And that was the last word, so far as has been discovered, about a Taku River railroad.