Wilfred Thibaudeau
	
Wilfred Thibaudeau was a French Canadian engineer who arrived in Skagway in 1898 and helped Frank Reid plan the town.((“Wilfred Thibaudeau.” //Skagway Stories, Stories and Foklore from Skagway, Alaska.// 2-19 website:  http://www.skagwaystories.org/tag/engineer/)) 
	
In the early 1900s, Thibaudeau was a civil engineer with the federal Department of the Interior working in the Yukon. The Ridge Road, built in 1899 near Dawson, was the first territorial road. F. Lewes and H.J. Smith were an ex-NWMP officers in charge of men working on the Ridge Road for Thibaudeau in May 1900.((GOV 1611 f 280d. YRG 1, Series 1, Vol. 5, RG 91 Series 1-a.)) 

Thibaudeau’s experience and skills led to the system of roads being built in the territory in 1904. Yukon roads over frozen muck and gravel flats were less expensive to maintain than roads running along the hillside. A road on a slope had to be cut into the hillside where the sun and seepage water thawed the muck into a slimy mass. On the flat, the moss could be left intact under a bed of poles to protect the ground from thawing. The frozen black muck had the consistency of stone and formed a solid bed. The inside faces of the side ditches could be banked with sod to provide additional protection. A road of this type cost $3,200 per mile. Two miles out of Whitehorse an excellent stretch of corduroy road leading to the Copper Belt was built over a marshy stretch of unfrozen ground. The six-inch timbers were flattened on the upper side to a width of fifteen feet in the central area to form a rough wagon road. This resulted in a more even wear on the lagging than if the timbers had been left in their original round shape.((“Roads and Road Buildings in Alaska.” //Geological Survey Bulletin,// Issue 263. Washington: U.S. Geological Survey, 2017: 225-226.))  
	
A group of men bought forty acres at the mouth of the Chandindu River, a tributary of the Yukon River, in May 1902. The group included Eugène Bourbeau, Thibaudeau, Croteau, Houle, Dugas and Ferdinand Bourbeau. The enterprise had something to do with coal.((//Empreinte: La Presence francophone au Yukon.// Tome 1. Association franco-yukonnaise, 1997: 42.)) 
	
During the hearings of the Britton Commission looking into the Treadgold Concession several miners called on the government to build and operate a water distribution system. The government responded by preparing a survey. In the spring of 1903, W. Thibaudeau surveyed the upper Klondike watershed through March and April and identified several possible ditch routes. Two years later he was ordered to prepare a detailed water proposal and worked on that through the summer and fall of 1905. His report on a water system for hydraulicking and sluicing purposes was completed in February 1906. The system would provide Klondike water to Bonanza and Hunker creeks and the north side of the Indian River basin. It was estimated to cost over $6 million to construct and nearly $600,000 annually to operate and included over 350 km of canal, 29 km of siphon and 5 km of tunnel. The report was quietly shelved.((David Neufeld, “’Running Water’ Supplying the Klondike Mines 1903-1906.” Prepared for the Occasional Mining Records Report 2006.)) 

In 1904 Thibaudeau and his assistant H.G. Dickson surveyed the government road into the Kluane District.((Need source))