Owen W. Hobbs
	
Owen Hobbs arrived in Dawson in the spring of 1897. He made a circular saw from pieces of an old whipsaw and, with a boiler and engine brought in by the stampeders, he started sawing lumber and making store and office fixtures.((The Klondike Nugget (Dawson), 1 November 1899; “Some Whose Riches Were Not Made In The Mines.” AlaskaWeb.org, 2020 website: http://alaskaweb.org/mining/nonminers.html.))
	
In July 1898, Hobbs and Smith started a new mill with two small engines.(("Local brevities." //Klondike Nugget// (Dawson), 16 July 1898.)) The Hobbs and Smith mill was located on First Ave. between the Yukon Saw Mill and the Ladue Mill. The mill was associated with their wood working plant. Tappan Adney describes a woodworking plant that worked all winter turning out well-made furniture and supplied most of the fittings of the saloons and stores.((Claire Eamer and Antonia Zedda. "The Yukon Saw Mill Company: Last of the Gold Rush Sawmills." Yukon Government, 1997: 24 -27, 29.)) 

By September 1899, Hobbs was the sole proprietor of the Dawson Sawmill and Building company. His plant represented a cash investment of $100,000. The company had a sawmill, a planning mill, and a woodworking department that could produce anything from dressed boards to roller-top office desks. Hobbs also carried a full line of builders’ hardware and tar paper, plus burial cloths and casket trimmings. A company manager was an expert in embalming bodies. In 1898, Hobbs started producing brick and lime. He found a lime deposit on the Yukon River about ten miles downriver from the Sixtymile River. He located a bed of clay and set up a brick kiln a short distance up the Yukon from Dawson.((The Klondike Nugget (Dawson), 1 November 1899; “Some Whose Riches Were Not Made In The Mines.” AlaskaWeb.org, 2020 website: http://alaskaweb.org/mining/nonminers.html.))  
	
Hobbs was a major promoter of building bricks after he opened the brick kiln. The sawmill was producing 20,00 bricks a day by 1901. In 1899, the company developed lime kilns on the Sixtymile River. The first brick building in Dawson was built for the Dawson Warehouse Company in 1899.((Ken L. Elder, ed., "53. Yukon Saw Mill" and "54. Smith and Hobbs/Dawson Sawmill and Building Co." in //Study Tour of the Yukon and Alaska.// Ottawa: Society for Industrial Archaeology, 1990.)) Hobbs had the construction contract for the 30 x 80-foot building at the corner of 3rd Street [King] and Fourth Avenue.((“First brick building.” //Dawson Daily News// (Dawson), 12 September 1899.)) A large brick warehouse was built for J.G. Wilson on Third Avenue in 1901 and the Gilsey house and the Worden Block were built on Second Ave. in 1901. Hobbs injured himself in a wood-cutting accident and left the Yukon around 1903.((Ken L. Elder, ed., "53. Yukon Saw Mill" and "54. Smith and Hobbs/Dawson Sawmill and Building Co." in //Study Tour of the Yukon and Alaska.// Ottawa: Society for Industrial Archaeology, 1990.))