James Wickersham (1857 – 1939)
	
James Wickersham was born near Patoka, Illinois and he passed the Illinois bar exam to become a lawyer in 1880, the year he married Deborah Susan Bell. The family moved to Tacoma in 1883. He was elected to the Washington State House of Representatives from 1898 to 1900 when he was appointed as the district judge for the third judicial district in Alaska with headquarter at Eagle on the Yukon River. The easiest and fastest route to Eagle was by taking the White Pass & Yukon Route railway to Whitehorse and then taking passage one of the fleet of sternwheelers that plied the Yukon River between Whitehorse and St. Michael on the Bering Strait.((JoAnne Wold, //Wickersham: The Man at Home.// Tanana-Yukon Historical Society, 1981: 2-3.)) \\ 
	
In 1900, Eagle had 385 residents, settlers and First Nations people. Wickersham had to collect fees from the trading post and saloons in his district as the federal government had not appropriated any money to build a courthouse, jail, or judge’s house. The judge was given an annual salary of $5,000 but his pay cheques were often five or six months late in arriving. Chief Charley was one of the first to appeal to Wickersham’s authority when his dog was stolen.((JoAnne Wold, //Wickersham: The Man at Home.// Tanana-Yukon Historical Society, 1981: 2-3, 6.)) \\
	
In 1901, Felix Pedro found gold at a site near the Chena River where merchant E.T. Barnette was forced to set up his trading post when the riverboat he was travelling on could no longer move upstream. A stampede occurred and Judge Wickersham moved his headquarters to the boom town of Fairbanks in 1903. He had to make decisions on the ownership of valuable mining property and made enemies in the process. In 1904 he was investigated, and subsequently cleared of all wrong, by the US Attorney General.((JoAnne Wold, //Wickersham: The Man at Home.// Tanana-Yukon Historical Society, 1981: 9-10, 16.)) \\
	
Judge Wickersham resigned his post in 1908 and was elected as Alaska’s delegate to congress.(("James Wickersham.” //Wikipedia,// 2024 website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wickersham)) Jack Dalton became involved in Wickersham’s campaign for re-election in 1910. Wickersham was a strong supporter of Alaska’s prospectors and opposed the Guggenheim’s control of land around the railroad town of Cordova where the syndicate employed hundreds of people. It was not a popular stance.((M. J. Kirchhoff, //Jack Dalton: The Alaska Pathfinder.// Juneau: Alaska Cedar Press. 2007: 145.)) \\
	
Wickersham was instrumental in the passing of the Organic Act of 1912, granting Alaska territorial status, and the first Alaska Statehood Bill in 1916. He served in Congress until 1917 and was re-elected in 1930. He was a founder of the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines that became the University of Alaska.(("James Wickersham.” //Wikipedia,// 2024 website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wickersham)) \\
	
James Wickersham’s 1938 book //Old Yukon: Tales – Trails – and Trials// is a reliable source on early Alaska history.