Yukon who is who

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Ralph “Sox” Troberg (b. 1905)
	
Sox Troberg was born in Grand Forks to Bertha Troberg. He had brother Walter (older), and sisters Ruby and Florence (younger). Sox started school at Grand Forks when he was four, so that the shrinking town could retain their teacher. Eight students were required before the government would supply a teacher. Other inhabitants of Grand Forks included Harry Leaman, Teddy Hatch, Tom Hebeirt, Phil Burich (Birch), and Pete Huley and his brother John Huley. The family moved from Grand Forks to Trail Gulch and from there into town. Sox worked for his grandfather, Eric August Troberg, when he ran the American Mine Theatre behind Diamond Tooth Gerties. Sox and Alex Seeley Sr. probably buried the old film in the abandoned swimming pool in town.((Leona Iskra, "The late interesting, Ralph 'Sox' Troberg." //The Whitehorse Star,// August 25, 2000.))  

After his grandfather’s theatre burned, Sox went to work for Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp. (YCGC). He first worked on the steam points just up from Hunker and the Arlington Roadhouse and Alex MacDonald's pump. He was a foreman by the time the company switched to cold water thawing. Before Sox went to work on the dredges, he was at the North Fork diversion ditch on the electric dragline and digging with the steam shovel. In February and March he walked the line from the power house over the hills and along Hunker, Dominion, Granville and Sulphur to check for damage before the line was powered for start-up.((Leona Iskra, "The late interesting, Ralph 'Sox' Troberg." //The Whitehorse Star,// August 25, 2000.))

Sox was a winchman for the dredge at Sulphur Creek when he met his future wife Ruth. She had come from Kamloops in 1940 or 1941 to spend two weeks with a childhood friend, Dorothy Powell. A typhoid epidemic in camp kept everyone in camp for six to eight weeks. Sox and Ruth married in November 1942 and lived in a log house that Sox built. Four rooms and a heated outhouse off the kitchen. By 1944, Sox was a dredge master on Dredge #4. The dredge was a Reail and Cripple and was digging through a shallow lake, fed by springs. That spring, the dredge was frozen to the bottom and not operational until May. By 1946, the family was living in Dawson on Seventh Ave. Sox was still a dredge master and a radio operator, using Morse Code, on Clear Creek. He took over his grandfather's mine in 1949 or 1950.((Leona Iskra, "The late interesting, Ralph 'Sox' Troberg." //The Whitehorse Star,// August 25, 2000.)) 
	
In 1950, R.E. Troberg and one employee used a bulldozer and a hydraulic system to mine on Bonanza Creek. They worked from 26 April to 1 October and recovered 280 fine ounces of gold. Troberg also had a lease on fifteen quartz claims on Hunker Creek and did prospecting and development work there in the winters. By 1950, he had a 280-foot adit.((R.L. Debicki, ed. “Yukon Mineral Industry, 1941 to 1959.” DIAND, Whitehorse, 1982: 51, 59, 65.)) His daughter, Leona Iskra, remembers the kids swimming in the reservoir and wading in the creeks until she was ten or eleven.((Leona Iskra, "The late interesting, Ralph 'Sox' Troberg." //The Whitehorse Star,// August 25, 2000.))  
	
Sox Troberg was Pete Foth's mining partner from 1961 to 1963 in the Cripple Hill Mining Co. Ltd. on Bonanza Creek. They hydraulic mined on Cripple Hill and bought the power to pump water up the hill from YCGC. They built a pipeline up the steep slope in 1961. Many tourists started to arrive after they started to hydraulic the white channel gravels. The men staked off a piece of ground and hauled in some paydirt so the tourists could pan. They charged $1 per pan and the young girls would show them how. After three years, the price of gold was still $35 per ounce and the paydirt ran out as they worked into the hill.((Jim Robb, "Colourful Five Per Cent."// Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 10 November 2000.)) 
Sox went on hockey trips as far south as Chicago and Los Angeles and Fairbanks. He was on a cat train during the winters to the oil fields following the route that became the Dempster Highway. He was an expeditor for Leo Proctor up the Dempster for various oil exploration camps. Sox worked for YCGC in Dawson as a mechanic and then as a grader operator and ended his career as a captain on the //George Black// ferry.((Leona Iskra, "The late interesting, Ralph 'Sox' Troberg." //The Whitehorse Star,// August 25, 2000.))