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EPISODE 682 ESCAPE FROM THE YUKON PART 5: THE TREADWELL MINE DISASTER — KILLS 12 HORSES, 1 MULE, MAYBE 1 MAN 1917

EPISODE 682 ESCAPE FROM THE YUKON PART 5: THE TREADWELL MINE DISASTER — KILLS 12 HORSES, 1 MULE, MAYBE 1 MAN 1917

alan skeoch

Nov. 20, 2-22

My water taxi was getting ready to dock in Juneau…the land- locked capital of Alaska was a city

stacked like cordwood. Ascending in tiers up a mountain on the east side of the Gatineau Channel.

Juneau was obvious to the naked eye. If so, then The Treadwell Mine must be equally obvious.

I turned and looked westward across the Channel. Douglas Island was there even though it had

moved and reshaped itself back in 1917. But there was no sign that this Island had once housed

the largest gold mine in the world. Here were the ruins of the Treadwell Mine?

Nothing there except one measly little nondescript tiny tower poking out of raw slurry of sand and bits of rubble

I was disappointed. The reason for my ‘ Escaping the Yukon’ plan was to see the fabled ruins of the Treadwell Mine.

There was….there is….nothing to see.

Just getting here had been exciting. Travelling down on the Yukon and White Pass Railway. Imagining the

3,000 bodies of inhumanely treated horses at Dead Horse Gulch, recreating the wild days in Skagway when

bunco artist Soapy Smith ruled the roost, taking a tiny 10 person water taxi down the Gatineau Channel.

All very exciting. But the culminating event, the Treadwell Mine…was not worth the effort. Or so it seemed

at first glance.

“Somewhere under this channel, over 2,000 feet below us are the skeletons of 12 horses and 1 mule and maybe 1 man”

“How do you know that?’

“The largest gold mine in the world in 1917 was here…the Treadwell Mine”

“Tunelled under the Gatineau Channel…5,000 tons of ore a day taken from under the ocean?”

“Miners excavated 65 miles of tunnels.”

“Then it all came to a crashing end in just two hours, April, 1917….”

“And all that remains is this peculiar building. Looks like a tiny Greek Parthenon”

“When Treadwell was in full flower there were buildings stretching for miles.”

“And Douglas Island was a fulll fledged town”

“Now there is just this one building”

“Built on a massive pile of mine tailings that has made the Douglas Island beach where no beach was before.”

The main event….THE TREADWELL MINE DISASTER…Is coming in the next episode.

alan skeoch

Nov. 21,2022

Post script: The Treadwell Mine was really four mines all carved out

of a fault in the skin of our mother earth. A crack that allowed gold

bearing magma to ooze up.

Take a close look at the small cross section map of the Treadwell Mine…top right hand side, small…NOTICE ANYTHING?

www.juneauempire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image2099306_web1_Treadwell_workers_outside_mine_building_ca_1918-300×185.jpg 300w, www.juneauempire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image2099306_web1_Treadwell_workers_outside_mine_building_ca_1918-640×396.jpg 640w” sizes=”(max-width: 1199px) 98vw, 720px” apple-inline=”yes” id=”68288B38-9943-49CE-99F7-E38E1D99DD54″ style=”box-sizing: inherit; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); display: inline-block; vertical-align: middle; max-width: 640px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25rem;” src=”https://alanskeoch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image2099306_web1_Treadwell_workers_outside_mine_building_ca_1918.jpg”>

Treadwell workers outside mine building, circa 1918. (Alaska State Library)

November 21, 2022
EPISODE 680 SOAPY SMITH OF SKAGWAY…CON MAN SHOT DEAD
EPISODE 680 SOAPY SMITH OF SKAGWAY…CON MAN SHOT DEAD

alan skeoch

November 18, 2022

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SOAPY SMITH – BUNKO ARTIST OF SKAGWAY

“Pay attention….you could be the lucky man.”

“Who is that speaking.”

“Oh, that’s Sloapy Smith…watch what happens.”

“I am wrapping a $100 dollar bill in one of these bars of shaving soap.

You ould be the lucky man who gets that $100 … Now I will shuffle

the bars of soap. Mix Them up. Try and keep your eyes on the

$100 bar…it could be yours in a moment.”

“How?”

“For $5…just a fiver. This is your chance right now. Who has a five dollar bill

and will get the hundred dollar bill? Just five dollars.”

“And there is a winner. Your name , sir? Show everyone the hundred dollar bill.

No tricks….no slieght of hand. A winner for five dollars,

Now here is how Soapy Smith got the nickname Soapy. He never let on

that the winner of the soap shuffle was a good friend of his. The hundred

dollar bill went back into Soapy/s pocket along with all the five dollar

bills he fleeced from the crowd. Soapy loved to work boom towns…mining

towns for instance…where he was not known. But he did not worry if he

was known because he always had a gang of ruthless hoodlums on his side.

He was a bunko man. Had all sorts of ways to get money from innocent but

greedy newcomers.

Soapy needed towns where law and order were absent. Mining boom towns

always presented good pickings. Skagway was the perfect place for a bunko

man. There was no law and order in the gold rush yeas. Scams were many.

Soapy took slamming seriously. He gathered a gang of like minded criminals.

Tough guys who welcomed the steamships full of gold seekers each of whom

had a grubstake to get him to the gold fields of the Klondike,

Soapy Smith had no intention of climbing the Chilkoot Trail. He had no

intention of beating a horse to death trying to get a ton of food and tools up

the slippery slopes of the mountains behind Skagway. Why do that

when the gold would eventually be brought back through Skagway where

he could get it with little effort.

BUNKO SCAMS

Stories of Soapy Smith vary somwhat but the kernel of truth is present. For instance

I rely on the excellent article by Gen Walton, published February 28, 1011.

Soapy’s most famous scam was the hidden money in the shaving soap caper. Some sources

say he hid a hundred dollar bill in the soap wrapper, Gen Walton says he hid five, ten

and fifty dollar bills. No matter All the bars of soap were won by his associates….

his gang members.

He had a whole suitcase full of scams.

1) Sleight of hand scams were favourites because they were easy to set up and paid off immediately. i.e. the soap scam

2) Gambling in all its forms, except no winners. None.

3) fake stock market scams…sold stock of companies that did no exist

4) real estates scams…gold mines with no gold

5) fake watch and diamond auctions

6) rigged poker games

7) Three card monte (Must find out how to play….see post script)

There is a tendency to regard bunko artists and con men just as non violent thieves stealing money

from greedy customers. Soapy was violent. He gathered gangs of violent men around him. Dealing

with Soapy was no joke. Before he went north to Skagway he ran a gangland empire in Denver,

Colorago. The newspaper editor ran an article exposing Soapy’s criminal activities. How did

Soapy react? With vicious violence. For instance:

“Smith did not want his criminal activities highlighted and he hated the News’allegations against him. He decided to get revenge on Arkins (*editor) and took a friend, “Banjo” Parker, with him. The men hid in the shadows and when Arkins emerged from the newspaper building, Smith struck him over the left temple with a loaded cane fracturing his skull and knocking him to the pavement senseless. Smith then pummeled, kicked, and beat Arkins as Parker stood guard and when Smith was finished with “his brutal work,” both men casually walked away.”

Soapy presided over a criminal gang empire before he ever went to Skagway but,once there, he took control of the town. His gang members greeted newcomers prtetendimg to be journalists or Christian ministers or

other sal of the earth people. Many of the thousands of men arriving in Skagway had money. At least enough to finance the two thousand pound survival package needed to prove to Canadian officials they could survive in the Canadian wildernes Soapy and his men fleeced many gold seekers many of whom would never get beyond Skagway. Violently if necessary. What did Skagway politicians and police do to stop Soapy?

Not much since Soapy’s men were often the various town officials expected to keep the peace. For a while Skagway was Soapy’s town.

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SOAPY SMITH’S GANG IN FRONT OF THEIR HANGOUT, SKAGWAY.

Then one day Soapy’s criminal empire collapsed when he confronted a group of indignant citizens calling themselves

the Committee of 101

“… on 7 July 1898 John Douglas Stewart, a Klondike miner, returned to Skagway carrying a sack of gold dust valued at $2,700. Three of Smith’s gang members learned of his treasure and convinced him to play three-card monte. Unfortunately, Stewart did, and he lost. When he refused to pay the three men grabbed his sack of gold dust and fled.

Stewart reported the theft and as news broke about the robbery broke in Skagway, city-wide indignation grew. Most citizens believed it was Smith’s gang that had committed the crime. Hubbub over the robbery reached fever pitch the following day and that is when the Committee of 101 demanded that Smith return the gold. He refused and claimed that Stewart had lost fairly. The Salt Lake Herald provided a summary of what happened next:

“Soapy got drunk and went out to fight them all. Arriving at the place where an indignation meeting was being held, Soapy found five men guarding the entrance. He rapped Frank Reid, the city engineer, over the head with a rifle. Reid snapped his pistol at Soapy and Soapy shot him in the groin. Standing on one foot Reid put three bullets into Soapy, killing him instantly.”[5]

ABOVE The funeral for Frank Reid , the man who shot Soapy Smith who was, in turn killed

by Soapy Smith before he died.

HOW I REMEMBER SKAGWAY IN 1961

DATELIE SEPT 15, 1961 When I got off the largely empty train in Skagway …coming from the north…a large cruise ship

was docking at the south end of town and a great number tourists flooded Skagway. I had never paid much attention to

the criminal career of Soapy Smith but noticed Skagway’s main street seemed to feature his exploits. Sort of like Chicago’s

misplaced glorification of Al Capne. The drunkenness, and gang centred lawlessness. All really imaginary 1961…tourist lore.Skagway was

a living movie set for the tourists to enjoy. Without the toursits the town was quiet…almost empty. I was lucky. Skagway had

come alive.. Seemed there were a lot of girls dressed in flouncy

dresses reminiscent of the dance hall girls of the 1890’s. There might even have been summer students imitating Soapy Smith

…the bunko side of him. Nice to be a part of the crowd. Met quite a few people who thought I was a local resident.. Must have been my

full beard

“Do you live here in Skagway?”

“Nope, just arrived like you..came down through White Pass on the train.”

“Where are you heading?”

“To Juneau…..have flight booked to Seattle.”

“How will you get to Juneau?”

“Bus, I guess.”

“No roads out of Skagway except ferry and road north to Anchorage.”

“You must be kidding.”

“Why don’t we smuggle you aboard the cruise ship…good food

and nice cruise. We could do it….or try.”

“Sorry….got to get to Juneau. There must be a way.”

“Only the water taxi.”

“Water taxi?”

“Small passenger boat….holds about 10 people tops. Need to reserve.”

Lucky. Got a seat on the water taxi. Quite a thrilling ride south past places where a large glacier was calving

huge chunks of ancient ice into the channel. The water taxi got a lot closer to the

glacier than the cruise ship. Every one on board seemed to take the

trip for granted. Except for me. So excited but tried to hide it.

I’ve often thought would my life be different if I got smuggled aboard that tourist ship.

If I had done that I would miss all the connections….would arrive in Toronto who

knows when. I am not sure if I even spent the night in Skagway. I do remember a feeling

of relief when I paid for the water taxi. I had to leave Skagway as fast as possible.

alanskeoch

THREE CARD MONTE

Three-card Monte – also known as Find the Lady and Three-card Trick – is a confidence game in which the victims, or “marks”, are tricked into betting a sum of money, on the assumption that they can find the “money card” among three face-down playing cards.

Definition: BUNCO ARTIST What does bunco mean in police terms?

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The word bunco comes from the Spanish word “banco,” which means bank, and the term is used by law enforcement to describe several criminal swindles. According to the National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI), these schemes are also called confidence, or con, games.
November 19, 2022
EPISODE 679 ESCAPING THE YUKON PART 6: HORSES …HORSES DIED LIKE MOSQUITOES S IN THE FIRST FROST (JACK LONDON)

EPISODE 679 ESCAPING THE YUKON PART 6: HORSES …HORSES DIED LIKE MOSQUITOES IN THE FIRST FROST (JACK LONDON)

alan skeoch

Nov. 16, 2022

The White Pass Railway passed over Dead Horse Gulch. A chilling place where an estimated 3,000 hoses are remembered.

Mot all died in tis hellhole . There were other gruesome deaths. Some gold seekers never even fed their horses . Couldn’t afford

to pay imported cost of hay. And there was nothing for the horse to eat even if it managed to reach White Pass.

These horses appear to be carrying imported hay. Sold at high prices to the few

men who tried to take their horses on to Dawson City.

The terrible deaths of 3,000 horses by men who should have cared for these helpless

animals is one of the big stains on the whole Gold Rush adventure. The horses were overloaded

and some simply fell over backwards as they scaled the White Pass.. At night the loads were left

on the horses making their lives even more miserable. No food for the horses. No care at all. Those that

survived the climb to White Pass were often abandoned to starve to death.

The treatment of these poor animals is documented below. Many of their bleaching bones remain in

DEAD HORSE GULCH as a reminder of neglect and gold fever.

3,000 animals die along the White Pass Trail giving it the nickname “the Dead Horse Trail.”

Alaska State Library, Case & Draper Photo Collection, P125-018.

The Trail Turns Deadly

“When the trail was opened by Captain William Moore it was designed for lightly loaded horses and experienced horsemen. It was not designed for the hordes of gold seekers who were bombarding the trail. Within one year of the discovery of gold in the Klondike thousands of people had attempted to cross the trail. Animals were brought up to Skagway on the same steamships that carried people and freight. Ship conditions were very harsh for everyone. Some animals were forced to stand for two weeks straight and did not get the luxury of food and water. If they did not die on their way to the Skagway they were killed in accidents, shipwrecks, or on the trails. Horses, mules, oxen, sheep, and dogs were loaded down, forced to wait in long lines, and exhausted by the trail leading over the pass. It was not uncommon for the trail to be blocked by a fallen horse.There were often long periods of waiting in lines on the trail. Stampeders refused to unload their horses that were weighed down with hundreds of goods as to not waste time reloading them.”

“I must admit that I was as brutal as the rest but we were all mad-mad for gold, and we did things that we live to regret.” -Jack Newman, packer on the White Pass Trail, ca.1897

“At times the trail became impassable due to harsh weather conditions, rain, and mud. Many stampeders retreated leaving their outfits strewn along 40 miles of trail. Horses were not equipped with the constant physical demands, boggy mud holes, and slippery rocks. No one knows the exact amount of animals that took the two trails but it is estimated that 3,000 horses died in a one year period on the White Pass Trail, earning it the nickname “Dead Horse Trail.” It was a brutal journey for man and beast alike. “

“The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps. They died at the rocks, they were poisoned at the summit, and they were starved at the lakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, and they went through it; in the river they drowned under their loads or were smashed to peices against the boulders; they snapped their legs in the crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with their packs; in the sloughs they sank from fright or smothered in the slime; and they were disemboweled in the bogs where the corduroy logs turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them to death and when they were gone, went back to the beach and bought more. Some did not bother to shoot them, stripping the saddles off and the shoes and leaving them where they fell. Their hearts turned to stone- those which did not break- and they became the beasts, the men on the Dead Horse Trail.” -Jack London, Journalist. The God of His Fathers, Doubleday Page & Co., New York, 1914, p. 70-80

Jack London … horrific description of inhumane horse treatment

November 16, 2022
EPISODE 678 ESCAPE FROM YUKON PART 5 DYNAMITE AND SNOOSE… WHITE PASS AND YUKON RAILWAY

EPISODE 678 ESCAPE FROM YUKON PART 5 DYNAMITE AND SNOOSE… WHITE PASS AND YUKON RAILWAY

alan skeoch

Nov. 11, 2022

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November 15, 2022
EPISODE 677 ESCAPING THE YUKON ON A HIGH JACKED PUBLIC BUS in 1961 — CONSIDER THIS EPISODE AN APOLOGY

EPISODE 677 ESCAPING THE YUKON

alan skeoch

Nov. 11, 2022

My planned exit from the Yukon was not as easy as planned.

First crisis was the bus. Big time crisis for me. Given the same situation what

would you have done? Dumb is as dumb does.

I am not sure what the bus looked like. Perhaps like this one but not coloured

like a school bus. The trip began sometime around 1 a.m. In the dark so no

pictures are available.

Mayo Landing was not as glorious as this sign indicates. At least not so in 1961

Stewart Crossing was a postage stamp sized place. Empty. A wilderness bust stop.

I AM SITTING in front of my coputer trying to decide whether this actually happened. Maybe I invented

the story…or exaggerated the story. It has been more than 70 years since I stole that public bus

on that cold Yukon night. Did it really happen? Have I been telling a lie for decades. A big lie,

like ex President Donald Trump I have told the lie so many times to so many

people that I may have come to believe the lie myself.

“On my last nigh in Mayo Landing in the tiny hours of September 13, 1962, I stole a public bus

and drove it …along with passengers ….from Mayo to Stewart Crossing.”

Yes,, it happened and is recorded in my Diary. Just one short sentence. “I took the May bus with

passengers and drove to Stewart Crossing. Had do it.”

So my memory has served me well and this is my chance to unload the events of that evening.

My last evening in Mayo Landing was spent drinking beer with my mining friends. Miners are nomadic.

They meet for a short time…get to know each other…have a few beers together. Then, if they are lucky

they have job for a few months or years until the ore runs out and they have to look for another

pace to hand their hats. Nomads.

And this is more true for geophysical prospectors. Jobs last a few weeks or occasionally

for a whole summer like our Yukon job. When the work is over the men take off for parts unknown…

a kind of diaspora.

We celebrated our friendship that bitter Yukon night. Sept. 12, 1961. Not a crybaby kind of evening. Just last

meeting of people we would never see again. Bill was there and Peter the Biblical scholar and Gilroy

the staker….and Moses Lord representing the native population. Most of them would get very drunk.

I faked it a bit. Only drank a few.,, felt safe doing so for I could sleep on the bus ride

to Stewart Crossing.

The bus was supposed to leave at 1 a.m. or thereabouts. So at 12.30 I shook hands wirh

the boys whose ages ranged from 21 to 61 or older. We had shared a lot of adventures some

of which were recounted in an earlier episode. We had lived and worked rough. We would

never see each other again. And we know it.

“Where the hell is the bus?”

“Looks to be a bit late.”

There were five or six of us waiting in the darkness for the bus. But the bus never

came.

“Happens all the time, the driver is sleeping it off at home. May not show up”

“But I have to be in Stewart Crossing by 6 a.m.”

“You can try to wake him. His cabin is not far. You’ll see the bus.”

“Got to wake him up Will he be drunk?”

“Hard to say.”

“I’ll go get him.”

“Careful of his dogs mind you.”

“Dogs?”

“He has a few huskies … dog team kind. Might not take

kindly to a stranger like you”

If I missed the bus coming down from Dawson City to Whitehorse then

my elaborate plant would collapse. And I did not know what I would

do. pay for a fight from May to Toronto?….with a whole bunch of flight

connections. Would cost a fortune. Worse would be the crashing of my big

plan. I really wanted to find Dead Horse Gulch, the Childoot Pass, Lake

Bennet , Skagway , the ghostly Treadwell Mine, and the

landlocked mysterious city of Juneau where the Tlingit people once lived.

“If the driver does not wake up and the dogs scare the shit out of you, there is

another way.”

“Take the bus.”

“I can’t drive a bus….and certainly don’t want to steal one anyway.”

“Happens all the time…”

“What happens?”

“A passenger takes the bus. Keys are in the ignition.”

Crisis. What to do? Seemed a bit off the wall to try and take the bus. But if I did not do that

then all my plans would fall flat. I remember tentatively entering the bus. Door was open

as if I was expected. Long metal arm did the opening and closing. I pulled the arm and

the door closed. Key was in ignition and when turned the motor rumbled into life. But no

sign the rumble awakened the driver.

I cannot remember whether it was stick shift or automatic. Seems to me there was a floor

shift which I slipped into first gear and the bus was on the move. At the Mayo Hotel I stopped.

May as well take the passengers with me Five or six of them. Local indigenous relatives of

Moses Loord no doubt. They did not bat an eye. Flopped into seats as if this was a normal

situation.

The thought of insurance risk popped into my head. Was i risking the lives of these people.

The thought popped out just as fast. I had other things to consider. Like lights. Road gear.

Pitch black highway. I took it slow. Only 33 miles to Stewart Crossing . Lots of time as the Dawson

southbound bus was not expected until dawn.

What can go wrong? Gas! Was the bus gassed cup. Seemed so. I got more confident as the

miles rolled by. Traffic in the early hours of Sept. 13 was nil. All I had to do was keep the moving

and scan he road for moose. Did I have high or low beams? No idea and not much chance

to check. Confidence increased.

Was the road gravel or tarmac? Try to keep to centre. Test brakes gingerly but keep moving.

What if I stopped and could not start again? Keep cool.

Population of Stewart Crossing is ten. Ten people with most of those ten living

in lonely cabins hidden away in the wilderness.

We reached Stewart Crossing and rolled to stop on the gravel. I had expected A small village.

instead I found about the loneliest place on earth. One tiny white wood clad place with a sign

reminding drivers this was the last place to get gas before Dawson City one way and Whiteouse

the other.

Not open. So we sat in the bus until the Dawson us rolled to stop at 6 a..M

And that was the end of Mayo Landing adventure and the beginning of another.

When I write these episodes I try to be self-deprecating. No one wants to read a puffed up ego. I doubt there would be many

readers of that kind of episode. The bus episode is different. Seems a little too self centred… Seems to have a load self-glorification. Sorry about that.

For that I apologize . It was a big event in my life. Fondly remembered.

alan skeoch

Nov. 109, 2022

November 11, 2022