Yukon who is who

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Anton K. Money (1904 – 1994)

Anton Money arrived at Telegraph Creek in 1923 at the age of twenty-two. He came on the riverboat //Hazel B// to work as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company. Money was not happy with this manager and so he hired on at the end of the season with Arthur Brindle, a mining engineer who was looking at mining properties around Dease Lake for a Vancouver mining company. After that he worked at cutting wood, hauling supplies and living a simple life in the bush.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))
In 1925, a mining company built a rugged road from Telegraph Creek to Dease Lake. Money got gold fever that year and staked his first claim on the head waters of the Eagle River (Gold Pan Creek). Money was at his claim on Dease Lake in June 1925 when he heard from a friend, Amos Godfrey, about a silver strike in the Frances Lake area. Little Jimmy had brought Godfrey a sample of high-grade ore and he had made a deal with a Vancouver-based company to locate the claim precisely. Amos could not make the trip alone and Money went with him.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))  

They travelled down Dease Lake, and Dease River to the Liard and then upstream to the Frances River, and up that to Frances Lake. Ten miles above Middle Canyon, they found an old-time trapper named Watson. He was living there with his First Nation wife and their children. Watson trapped down the Frances and the Liard rivers as far as Fish Lake, at the head of the canyon about fifteen miles above Lower Post. Later he moved his post to Fish Lake and it became known as Watson Lake.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))   

At Frances Lake Godfrey and Money met the group of First Nation people living there and three of the men spoke English. Little Jimmy, who originally showed Amos the ore sample, received his English name at Lower Post. Chief Smith and Caesar both spoke English as well and their English names were bestowed by a party of stampeders who came there in 1898. The oldest man in the group was called Dentiah, or "Old Chief."  He and his son had helped build the Hudson's Bay Co. post at Pelly Banks. Dentiah died at Frances Lake in 1929, claiming to be 127.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.)) Money and Godfrey arrived at Frances Lake at the end of July 1925. Money found gold on a tributary of the Finlayson River and stayed to work it while Godfrey returned to the Dease Lake region.((Dick North, "The Frances Lake Trail." Prepared for YTG Renewable Resources, 1986: 29 - 31.))

Money travelled outside that winter and met and married Joyce Curtis in November 1926. In 1927, they started by dogteam up the Overland Trail from Whitehorse to Fort Selkirk. Little River Roadhouse was open, and they spent the first night of the trail in luxury. The second night they were at the old Nordenskiold Roadhouse. It was closed so they made a tent camp in front of it. Late on the third day afternoon they came to the Braeburn Roadhouse and bunked there for the night. Two days later they came down the long slope into Carmacks. Some fifty cabins and tents were strung out between the two rivers. They could see the road house at the north end of town close by the bridge over the Nordenskiold, but they turned toward the Yukon River instead and headed for the Taylor & Drury trading post, passing log cabins and howling dogs. Dan Snure, the trader, insisted they stay in his bungalow since he used rooms over the store during the winter. The weather dropped to minus 40 and they stayed a couple of days. Snure told them of a shortcut and they went down the Yukon to Little Salmon and followed that stream and over some high country to the upper Pelly at Rose Creek.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))

The trader and his wife at Little Salmon was named Morrison, and Anton Money had met them in Whitehorse during the fall of 1926. Money and Joyce stayed at Little Salmon when they were mushing back to Frances Lake. They were at Frances Lake for two years, mining the claim until after Christmas in 1929 and then they left for family and home in Rochester and England. They would not return for six years. Anton had mined seventeen pokes of gold worth about $1,000 each.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))

Their second son, Tony, was born in Vancouver in 1930. Money then started work for a Boston mining company and he worked as a field scout until the beginning of WWII. In 1936, the family flew into Frances Lake in a small plane, landing on the silver-lead claims on the east arm, developed the claims for a year, and then flew out again.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))  
Money worked for the federal government managing 3,000 men in an explosives plant north of Toronto. Then he went back north and ran twelve dog team crews surveying the route over the Mackenzie Mountains for the Canol Pipeline.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))
In 1945, he flew by charter plane to Frances Lake and sold the Half-Moon claim to a mining company. The last war years he spent as an assistant superintendent for the Kansas City Bridge Company helping to build the airports at Whitehorse and Watson Lake in the Yukon.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.))

Joyce and Anton were together for twenty-four happy years, and she spent time with him in his wilderness work. During the war. she lived in Edmonton and the boys were in high school. Later they had a home in Santa Barbara and he worked in a lime quarry.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.)) But Joyce fell in love with another and she and Money divorced. Money became an associate engineer at the University of California, Santa Barbara overseeing the construction of roads, walks, and drainage on the campus. While there he met Jerry Walker and they were married in 1951. In 1952, they went north to Muncho Lake [or Toad River], and built and operated a hunting and fishing lodge known as the Village Inn. Joyce's husband was killed in a private plane crash in 1956 and she died of cancer in 1972. Jerry and Anton sold the Village in 1964 and were ready to leave the north and return to California when Jerry died in her sleep.((Anton Money with Ben East, //This was the North.// Toronto: General Publishing Co.  1975.)) 
           
Money Creek, Elés Tué, flowing into the West Arm of Frances Lake, is named for Anton Money.