Golden Alaska: A Complete Account to Date of the Yukon Valley

by Ernest Ingersoll

HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UPPER YUKON VALLEY.

The sources of the Yukon are just within the northern boundary of British Columbia (Lat. 62 deg.) among a mass of mountains forming a part of the great uplift of the Coast range, continuous with the Sierras of California and the Puget Sound coast. Here spring the sources of the Stikeen, flowing southwest to the Pacific, of the Fraser, flowing south through British Columbia, and of the Liard flowing northeasterly to the Mackenzie. Headwaters of the Stikeen and Liard interlock, indeed, along an extensive or sinuous watershed having an elevation of 3,000 feet or less and extending east and west. There are, however, many wide and comparatively level bottom lands scattered throughout this region and numerous lakes. The coast ranges here have an average width of about eighty miles and border the continent as far north as Lynn Canal, where they trend inland behind the St. Elias Alps. Many of their peaks exceed 8,000 feet in height, but few districts have been explored west. Eastward of this mountain axis, and separated from it by the valleys of the Fraser and Columbia in the south and the Yukon northward, is the Continental Divide, or Rocky Mountains proper, which is broken through (as noted above) by the Laird, but north of that cañon-bound river forms the watershed between the Liard and Yukon and between the Yukon and Mackenzie. These summits attain a height of 7,000 to 9,000 feet, and rise from a very complicated series of ranges extending northward to the Arctic Ocean, and very little explored. The valley of the Yukon, then, lies between the Rocky Mountains, separating its drainage basin from that of the Mackenzie, and the Coast range and St. Elias Alps separating it from the sea. Granite is the principal rock in both these great lines of watershed-uplift, and all the mountains show the effects of an extensive glaciation, and all the higher peaks still bear local remnants of the ancient ice-sheet.

The headwaters of the great river are gathered into three principal streams. First, the Lewes, easternmost, with its large tributaries, the Teslintoo and Big Salmon; second, the Pelly, with its great western tributary, the MacMillon.

The Lewes River has been described. It was known to the fur traders as early as 1840, and the Chilkat and Chilkoot passes were occasionally used by their Indian couriers from that time on. The gold fields in British Columbia from 1863 onwards stimulated prospecting in the northern and coastal parts of that province, and in 1872 prospectors reached the actual headwaters of the Lewes from the south, but were probably not aware of it; and that country was not scientifically examined until the reconnaissance of Dr. G. M. Dawson in 1887. In 1866 Ketchum and La Barge, of the Western Union Telegraph survey, ascended the Lewes as far as the lakes still called Ketchum and La Barge. In 1883 Lieut. Frederick Schwatka, U. S. A., and an assistant named Hayes, and several Indians, made their way across from Taka inlet to the head of Tahgish (a Tako) Lake, and descended the Lewes on a raft to Fort Selkirk, studying and naming the valley. From Fort Selkirk an entirely new route was followed toward the mountains forming the divide between the Yukon and the White and Copper rivers, which flow to the Gulf of Alaska, north of Mt. St. Elias. After discovering a pass little more than 5,000 feet high, they struck the Chityna River and followed that to the Copper River and thence to the coast. The Copper River Valley was thoroughly explored somewhat later by Lieuts. Abercrombie and Allen, U. S. A., who added greatly to knowledge of that large river, which, however, seems to have no good harbor at its mouth. The miners began to use the Chilkoot Pass and the Lewes River route to the Yukon district in 1884. Some additions were made to geography in this region by an exploring expedition despatched to Alaska in 1890 by Frank Leslie's Weekly, under Messrs. A. J. Wells, E. J. Glave and A. B. Schanz. They entered by way of Chilkat pass and came to a large lake at the head of the Tah-keena tributary of the Lewes, which they named Lake Arkell, though it was probably the same earlier described by the Drs. Krause. Here Mr. Glave left the party and striking across the coast range southward discovered the headwaters of the Alsekh and descended to Dry Bay. At Forty-mile creek Mr. Wells and a party crossed over into the basin of the Tanana and increased the knowledge of that river. Mr. Schanz went down the Yukon and explored the lower region. In 1892 Mr. Glave again went to Alaska, demonstrated the possibility of taking pack horses over the Chilkat trail, and with an aid named Dalton made an extensive journey southward along the crest of the watershed between the Yukon valley and the coast.

Turning now to the Pelly, we find that this was the earliest avenue of discovery. The Pelly rises in lakes under the 62nd parallel, just over a divide from the Finlayson and Frances Lake, the head of the Frances River, the northern source of the Liard, and this region was entered by the Hudson Bay Company as early as 1834, and gradually exploring the Laird River and its tributaries, in 1840 Robert Campbell crossed over the divide north of Lake Finlayson (at the head of the Frances), and discovered (at a place called Pelly Banks) a large river flowing northwest which he named Pelly. In 1843 he descended the river to its confluence with the Lewes (which he then named), and in 1848 he built a post for the H. B. Company at that point, calling it Fort Selkirk. This done, in 1850, Campbell floated down the river as far as the mouth of the Porcupine, where three years previously (1847) Fort Yukon had been established by Mr. Murray, who (founded by James Bell in 1842) crossed over from the mouth of the Mackenzie. The Yukon may thus be said to have been "discovered" at several points independently. The Russians, who knew it only at the mouth, called it Kwikhpak, after an Eskimo name. The English at Fort Yukon, learned that name from the Indians there, and the upper river was the Pelly. The English and Russian traders soon met, and when Campbell came down in 1850 the identity of the whole stream was established. The name Yukon gradually took the place of all others on English maps and is now recognized for the whole stream from the junction of the Lewes and Pelly to the delta.

The Yukon basin, east of the Alaskan boundary, is known in Canada as the Yukon district, and contains about 150,000 square miles. This is nearly equal to the area of France, is greater than that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by 71,000 square miles, and nearly three times bigger than that of the New England states. To this must be added an area of about 180,000 square miles, west of the boundary, drained by the Yukon upon its way to the sea through Alaska. Nevertheless, Dr. G. M. Dawson and other students of the matter are of the opinion that the river does not discharge as much water as does the Mackenzie—nor could it be expected to do so, since the drainage area of the Mackenzie is more than double that of the Yukon, while the average annual precipitation of rain over the two areas seems to be substantially similar. Remembering these figures and that the basin of the Mississippi has no less than 1,225,000 square miles as compared with the 330,000 square miles of the Yukon basin, it is plain that the statement often heard that the Yukon is next to the Mississippi in size, is greatly exaggerated. In fact, its proportions, from all points of view, are exceeded by those of the Nile, Ganges, St. Lawrence and several other rivers of considerably less importance than the Mississippi.