The labour of keeping the overland trail in order reminds one of that of Hercules cleaning the Augean stables. The road bed has had to be filled in and remade again and again. The route is changed from year to year. Now and then we passed an old roadway that had become so filled with boulders that a man could hardly crawl over it. This region had no rain for three months until day before yesterday, when enough fell to change the whole face of Nature, and make this glacial clay like so much putty. Our automobile weighed more than two tons, and we had to go carefully where there was any doubt as to the condition of the clay. At one wet spot we found ourselves down to the axles, with the wheels held fast in the mud. We had brought with us an axe and a long-handled shovel for use in just such an emergency. We cut down trees and made a bed of branches in front of the car. A pine track was put under the wheels and a pine tree used as a lever to aid the jack in getting the car out of the mud. It took us about two hours to dig the machine from the clay and get it on the firm road bed. After that when we came to soft clay we turned out and sought new roads through the grass or rushed over the wet spots to prevent the car from sinking.
The overland trail is used almost altogether during winter, although the Canadian government keeps it in such a condition that it is fit for travel in summer. It is, on the whole, better than most of Uncle Sam’s roads in Alaska, and in the winter makes possibles regular mail service into the Klondike. The freight and the mail are carried on great sleds hauled by six horses, with relays at the various road houses. Each house has stables for the horses and at some of them there are sleeping accommodations for passengers.
At the Tahkeena road house I saw a great stack of horse feed that had been brought up the Tahkeena and cached there for the winter, and at the Little River road house I saw one of the sleds used for carrying foodstuffs and other perishables into the Klondike during the cold season, when the thermometer may fall to seventy degrees below zero. The sled was a covered one, large enough to carry three or four tons. It was so arranged that carbon heaters could be placed in troughs around its bed. These heaters keep the tightly covered load from freezing. Such sleds are drawn by four or six horses, according to the state of the roads.
The Canadian government has already spent a great deal on this road, and its upkeep costs thousands of dollars a year. Within the last few years the trail has been much improved for the use of automobiles. The first time an automobile road was proposed many people scoffed at the idea and said that it could not be done. The matter came up before the Parliament at Ottawa and was discussed pro and con. An appropriation of fifty thousand dollars had been asked. The objections made were that automobiles could not be run in the low temperature of the Yukon, and that the road was so rough that the machines could never make their way over it.
Built at the height of the Klondike gold rush, the White Pass Railway transported thousands of prospectors and millions of dollars’ worth of gold during the first few years of its existence. It is one hundred and eleven miles long and connects Skagway with White Horse.
For more than half the year the Yukon River is covered with ice, and then mail, freight, and passengers for the interior are carried on sleds by way of the Overland Trail from White Horse to Dawson.
“Our first stop was at the Tahkeena roadhouse, famous for its Irish cook. It stands on the banks of the Tahkeena River, which we crossed on a ferry.”