Yukon who is who

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Richard A. Fox (1861 - 1950)
	
Richard A. Fox may have been William Henry Mannes, born in Ipwich, United Kingdom, who immigrated to the United States and went through divorce proceedings in Colorado in 1897.((Conversation with Kathy Jones Gates, 19 April 2025.))  

The re-invented Richard Fox worked as a boilermaker in Colorado for a few years and took building contracts. He saved a reported $1000,000, lost it in a bank failure during the 1890s depression, and then stampeded to the Yukon in 1898.((“Richard A. Fox is visiting Vancouver.” //The Dawson News// (Dawson), 2 April 1925.)) 
Fox was working in construction in Dawson in 1903.((“A Hobbs Surprise.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 15 December 1903.)) He soon turned to creating well-crafted in-laid boxes and objects made of bone and mammoth ivory. In July 1915, he recovered a mammoth tusk and brought some mammoth meat to Dawson in a gunnysack.((“Mammoth found by Dawson prospector.” //Alaska Daily Empire// (Juneau), 20 July 1915.)) In 1921, Fox advertised his ivory shop at 317 First Avenue in a local newspaper saying his specialty was in mammoth ivory beads, lodge gavels, paper knives, paper weights, cribbage boards, tongs and canes.((“Fancy Ivory Work.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 12 December 1921./)) In 1922 he added Mayo silver souvenirs to his advertisement.((//Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 27 November 1922.))

Fox delighted in exhibiting the things he made or found interesting. In September 1906, when Fox was living at Eighth and Craig streets in Dawson and operating an ivory working shop on First Avenue, he exhibited a 6’6” potato plant at the Klondike Market. Grown in his garden without fertilizer or artificial watering it produced eleven potatoes. The largest weighted two pounds and even the smallest was almost as large as a man’s fist.((“Giant spud vine and potatoes.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 25 September 1906.)) In 1910, he collected a meteorite that struck earth a few feet from where he was mining on Minto Gulch. He brought the six-pound rock to Dawson and exhibited it at Nick’s barber shop.((“Specimen brought to City.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 6 June 1910.)) 
Fox was also a poet with a poem published in a local newspaper. The poem retells the story of the Klondike gold strike, putting Skookum Jim as the discoverer and leaving George Carmack completely out of the story. This at a time when Yukoners were championing Canadian Robert Henderson over American George Carmack as the discoverer.((“The paystreak.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 4 April, 1906.)) Fox was outspoken in his views and wrote to the newspapers several times on topics related to good and bad behaviour.((“Reply to Mr. Field.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 7 April 1909.; “Killing game for sort.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 21 February 1908; “In Seattle.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 20 July 1907; “That Bad Seattle.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 15 April 1907.))

Fox was a believer in the “mother lode” as the source of all the Klondike gold and he was an early staker in quartz claims when other scoffed.((“Week’s mining records.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 2 June 1905.)) In 1911, “longtime Hunker and Minto Gulch miner” R.A. Fox returned to Dawson from a prospecting trip to the new placer creeks on the Yukon River, Britannia and Canadian.((“Sourdough likes new creeks.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 9 August 1911.))

In June 1924, Fox left the Yukon for a year to travel and find a publisher for his book //The People on Other Planets.//((“Well-known people leave for outside.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 21 June 1924.)) It was difficult to find one willing to print it for his few thousand dollars but it helped that he had advance orders.((“R.A. Fox tells of his troubles with publisher.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 4 March 1925.)) Fox returned to Canada in 1925 and started a lecture tour with “The Fulfilment of the Prophecy of the World’s Tribulations.”((“The Universal Spiritualist.” //The Province// (Vancouver), 7 March 1925.)) He was back in Dawson in July with a promised movie contract for $30,000 to be completed in 1926.((“Old timer relates incidents.” //The Dawson News// (Dawson), 28 July 1925.)) 
	
Richard Fox was accepted as a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers in 1919.((“Are added to the pioneer membership.” //The Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 20 August 1919.)) In 1926, he presented the Yukon Order of Pioneers with one of his fine mammoth ivory gavels.((“Pioneers have busy time at regular session.” //The Dawson News// (Dawson), 6 February 1926.)) Fox was still living in Dawson 1930 and was a member of the International Highway Association.((“International Highway Association of Yukon.” //The Dawson News// (Dawson), 20 May 1930.)) In 1931, a Vancouver newspaper printed Fox’s directions for safe northern travel in the skies and on the ground.((“Dawson Old-timer points out faults in Burke party program.” //Vancouver Sun// (Vancouver), 8 January 1931.)) In 1934, Fox was again writing to the Dawson newspaper about a trip he took to Europe and Russia.((“Impressions of Russia as gleaned from letters from R.A. Fox.” //The Dawson News// (Dawson), 10 February 1934.)) This time he may have really travelled in body as well as mind as he was seen coming back north through Whitehorse.((//Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 18 May 1934.))
	
In 1937, Fox was still behaving in a quirky manner, such as panning for gold on the main street in Dawson, and making useful objects out of mammoth ivory.(“Dawson Proves to be no ghost city.” //The Lethbridge Herald// (Lethbridge), 18 September 1937.)) He remained outspoken on several topics including agriculture and graft in the government, and in the 1930s added opinions on the benefits of a highway connecting the Yukon to southern transportation routes. In November 1938 and January 1944, he connected several of his favourite topics stating drought-stricken farmers would do well to relocate along a northern highway.((‘Government officials only obstacle to Alaska Highway.’” //The Vancouver Sun// (Vancouver), 12 November 1938; “The Alaska Road.” //The Vancouver Sun// (Vancouver), 4 January 1944.)) Just when you think the man is making sense, he veers away from science. Fox’s 1925 book, //The People on Other Planets,// is dedicated to people of advanced thought and to scientists and inventors not hampered by prejudice or so-called impossibilities.((Thanks to Kathy Jones Gates for collecting and sharing newspaper clippings and other information about the fascinating life of Richard A. Fox. Kathy has donated the primary material to the Dawson City Museum Archives.))