Martin Patrick Berrigan (1872 – 1950)

Martin Berrigan was born in Quebec and came to the Klondike in 1898. He worked as a miner and had business dealings with Alexander McDonald, who died in 1909 in debt to Berrigan for over a thousand dollars. Berrigan retained Dawson lawyer F.X. Gosselin to assist him in pressing the McDonald estate to settle these debts.¹⁾ Berrigan staked eleven claims between 1899 and 1935. He worked on the dredges in the summer and in the 1930s began to winter in Whitehorse. He moved to Whitehorse permanently in 1939. During wartime, he started to build single cabins for rent between 1st and 2nd Ave. and lived in one of them. His first two-story cabin was called “Mah Bing's Residence.” He then started building cabins between 2nd and 3rd avenues. This was land formerly used by Roland Ryder's house, stables and vegetable garden. The Log Skyscraper cabins were built by Berrigan between 1946 and 1949. Five of his cabins are still standing. He cut the logs, some of them weighing 300 lbs, 10 miles away on the other side of the Yukon River. Tony Cyr hauled the logs to Lambert St. by horse and sleigh and Berrigan used a rope and pulley system to fit them into place. Berrigan may have been challenged to build a “skyscraper,” he may have wanted more rent from the property, or he may have thought this arrangement would be easier to heat. [Or all of the above.] Martin Patrick Berrigan was in his late 70s when he finished building these well-known Whitehorse landmarks. Soon after the three-story building was finished, he entered the hospital with a heart attack and died. The cabins were sold by the estate two years later to Robert Rowen, an insurance salesman. The cabins rented out for $25 per month and were always full.²⁾