Digital Bob Archive

The Sheep Creek Valley was the scene, in September 1912, of the most massive search for lost persons ever carried on in the Juneau area. The triggering event was a ptarmigan hunt by three young men, inexperienced hunters, who left town on Thursday morning, September 5. They carried two shotguns and a rifle and planned to return to town by that evening.

They were John Shattuck, 21, a student at Oregon State College and a brother of Juneau businessmen Henry and Allen Shattuck; Dell Linscott, 20, employed at the sawmill owned by Henry Shattuck, and Leslie Oliver, 17, whose father was foreman at the sawmill. Oliver had recently been discharged from the hospital after a bout of pneumonia.

The three did not return on Thursday and by Friday the mountains on both sides of Sheep Creek were shrouded in fog. There was real concern for the safety of the hunters when they had not appeared by that evening. Several search parties started out at daylight on Saturday. Percy Pond and several sawmill workers went up the Sheep Creek Trail. J.H. King headed a party that went up Mount Roberts to work toward Sheep Creek. Another group went to the old Carlson cannery on Taku Inlet to begin a search from there, and Bart Thane ordered a party to start from Perseverance, in Silver Bow Basin, and work up the mountains from there. Half a dozen boats left Juneau and Douglas to comb the shoreline.

By Sunday afternoon concern for the missing men had spread to all Channel towns. Dozens of men had joined the search, including experienced prospectors and woodsmen. At a mass meeting it was decided that teams of a dozen men, each with an experienced leader, would be most efficient. Specific areas were assigned to each team. There were many volunteers, including Treadwell miners, two teams from Douglas and one from the Alaska Road Commission. Acting Governor W.L. Distin wired to Fort Seward at Haines for a contingent of troops. A reward of $500 was offered for the finder of the men, or their bodies.

Charles Goldstein and B.M. Behrends opened their stores at 11 p.m. on Sunday and their clerks and some volunteers spent the night putting up packs of warm clothing, blankets, food and other appropriate items. The Alaska Supply Company furnished pocket compasses and waterproof matchboxes. At the Alaska Grill a crew of men and women made sandwiches and packaged them.

On Monday an estimated 500 men were searching the rugged country with its canyons, ravines, snowbanks, windfalls and tangled undergrowth. It was not until Thursday morning that the body of Leslie Oliver was found on the Taku slope of Sheep Mountain. The other two bodies were found about noon, a short distance away. There were indications that they had spent several days tramping around in a relatively small area until too weak and exhausted to travel farther. Four shotgun shells were found that had been gnawed down to the brass.

The tragedy was blamed on inexperience and unfamiliarity with the area, lack of a compass, and lack of emergency food.