EPISODE 233 YUKON DIARY YUKON CABIN
alan skeoch’
Jan 2021
Today is a day for thought. While surveying in the Yukon we often came across
old log cabins that had been abandoned decades earlier. Most often they had collapsed but
A few were habitable. One of those we lived in for a time. Dr. Aho’s book speculates
on the contents. Remember the buildings were small, maybe the size of your living room
or Your garage. What was considered necessary?
Our cabin had the luxury of a linoleum floor. 1962. What else would
have been there in 1930? 1920?
What colour is my nightshirt?
Answer
The cabins that gold miners built were not large… about the size of a garage…some bigger, most smaller.
Dr. Aho speculated on what the interior of these cabins contained. He knew. Dr. Aho spent a lot
of time looking at these cabins. And talking to the men who lived in them.
“The cabins were rough and unpainted with moss-chinked walls…one or at most two rooms…small four paned windows….
doors rough slabs. Furnished with only the bare necessities….shelves stacked with groceries, tobacco, ore samples,
gold scales, lanterns, cans, boxes, reading material, candles and ammunition. In the corners or hung on the walls
were boots, clothes, dog harness, picks, axes, cobblers’ kits, tools, boxes of junk, pack sacks, moccasins, socks,
rifles snd moose horns. On spruce pole cots were eider down or fur sleeping bags snd clothes. A small stove
firewood, kindling, paper, water barrel, wash basin and soap in one corner….small kitchen with utensils…hand made
table and chairs. Brooms from spruce boughs..” (Hills of Silver, The Yukon’s Mighty Keno Hill Mine by Dr. Aaro E. Aho)
How did the cabin smell? Fishy (cheap, easy to get but rotted fast)…also smell of tobacco…perhaps the odd skin or two being scraped.. foul smell. And the smell
of human beings. Latrine was never far away from the cabin. Sometimes very close as ‘on the back porch’
This was a very rough way to live.
Add to all this a 45 gallon oil drum converted into a kind of furnace with iron legs resting on a bed of rocks.
Any person staying around Keno City or the mines faced cruel winter temperatures. Mayo Landing
is the coldest place to live in North America. That 45 gallon drum had to be converted into a furnace
…fed every two hours from a pile of cordwood stacked close by.
local supplies were soon consumed. Firewood more and more expensive as trees were consumed. Sleep interrupted by need to feed the fire every two hours.
Some placer miners like Jack Acheson shut everything down when freeze up arrived and headed south.
Over wintering in Keno was something to avoid But people did stay the winter…still do. Some kept dog teams for winter transportation. Dogs
had to eat. One such person said he would need between 30 to 60 moose just to feed his dogs.
Terrible cost on the wild population.
Our cabin was pure luxury…we had a linoleum floor and a screen door
On the right side of Bill Dunn is a 45 gallon drum…the winter furnace. Imagine
how much of the floor space that hand made furnace would need Imagine the
danger if the cordwood and kindling got just a little too close to the hot drum.
Picture of a corner in this cabin where the miners are panning gold from concentrate.
Why do this finishing inside the cabin? Because the cold outside is a killer cold.
Take a look at the log walls. Lots of room for mice, perhaps rats, to squeeze their
way inside.
This cabin we found on one of our trails. Barely big enough to fit a toy car. Now imagine all
those items quoted by Aho fitted into this place. No room to move.
This was once the horse stable on Keno Hill’s Wernecke Mine. There were 98 horses used. The stable could not
possible hold them all. Half would be stabled in Mayo Landing. That leaves 48 horses here or nearby. Tough animals.
Some still existed in 1962. Maybe even today in 2021.
Log cabins in Keno City…some big, most small.
This is the interior of s cabin we used in Algoma. Quite spacious. Big stove. Marjorie joined us on that job. NO roads. Marjoire
arrived by train…the ACR…Algoma Central Railwsy. She brought our cat, Presque Neige, and her electric sewing machine.
Gave us all a laugh. We had wolves howling at night so the cat became house bound. And we had no electricity. We still have that
feather lined sleeping bag…comfy.,,fits two people…warm. Few of the protectors were married (which is understandable). Mine
owners provided good company houses for families. But small by today’s standards. When the mine At Elss closed in
1989 the houses were sold off and trucked to god knows where.
Here is another abandoned…tiny…log cabin.
On the Yukon job I packed everything in my rucksack and my brief case. Packed for three months… everything needed had to
be in those two bags. Glad I packed Pierre Berton’s Klondike and Robert Services’ poems. Wish they had been paperbacks.
Challenge: Imagine you have to paick for three months but only have one rucksack. What would you take?
…remember to take lots of heavy socks. Forget your computer and iPhone…useless. One shirt? Two pairs
of pants, 2 underwear…etc. etc. Camera? A luxury item but worth taking.. Film? Hard to get.
alan skeoch
Jan. 2021