Arthur Murray Jarvis

Arthur Jarvis was one of the first members of the North-West Mounted Police when it was formed in 1873 to combat the whiskey running in the Canadian prairies.1) Jarvis led one of Canada's most famous manhunts for a man named Charcoal. He also served in British Columbia when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built.2)

Inspector Jarvis took charge of Dalton Post in May 1898. He travelled from Vancouver to Skagway with eighteen men and twenty-one horses and then crossed the Lynn Canal to the abandoned Haines Mission to the start of the Dalton Trail. In three months he built a customs house and fenced eleven acres and sowed them in timothy. This post was seven kilometres from the Chilkat village of Klukwan. He decided to build a post near Dalton's Post before winter, due to the mining activity there. Jarvis crossed the Tatshenshini River in July 1898 and met the new chief of the Chilkats, the son of Kohklux. He was invited to a potlatch at Klukwan where he was shown the British flag taken during the pillage of Fort Selkirk.3)

In the summer of 1898, three prospectors discovered gold on the Porcupine River about half a mile off the Dalton Trail and thirty-five miles inland from Pyramid. Later in the summer, two of them, S. W. Mix and Ed Fenley prospected further on the river and found lots of gold nuggets. They hiked over to the NWMP post at Pleasant Camp and showed their gold. Captain Jarvis allowed his men to go and prospect. Earlier in the summer Jarvis had made his own big find when he helped to discover enormous beds of copper close to the Dalton Trail at Rainy Hollow, about 50 miles inland from Haines.4)

Jarvis left the force in the spring of 1900 to serve in South Africa during the Boer War in the Lord Strathcona Rangers with Colonel Sam Steele.5) This was a reversal of roles, as Steele had served under Jarvis in the Yukon.6) Jarvis was back in charge of Dalton Post in May 1901. In October he was posted to the Dawson Detachment.7)

Jarvis Street in Whitehorse is named for Major A. M. Jarvis, in honour of his service during the Boer War.

1) , 6)
Delores Smith, “Jarvis helped stem whiskey-runners’ tide.” The Whitehorse Star (Whitehorse), 17 August 1994.
2) , 3) , 5) , 7)
John Theberge ed., Kluane Pinnacle of the Yukon. Doubleday & Co. Inc. 1980: 113-114.
4)
M. J. Kirchhoff, Jack Dalton: The Alaska Pathfinder. Juneau: Alaska Cedar Press. 2007: 100.