Errol F. “Slim” Keobke (d. 1983)
Slim Keobke came to Whitehorse in 1927 and worked in the Whitehorse Copper Belt.)(Linda E.T. MacDonald and Lynette R. Bleiler, Gold & Galena. Mayo Historical Society, 1990: 396-7.)) In 1921, T.C. Richards started a winter tractor-train service to Dawson on the Overland Trail. The horse-drawn stages had made the trip in five days, now Richard’s vehicles made the trip in three, with passengers huddled on bales of freight. By 1935, Richards and partner “Deacon” Phelps had the Whitehorse-Dawson mail contract under the company name Klondike Airways. During the summer, two Ford V8 trucks were now making the trip over the stagecoach trail in two and a half days. They used a cat train in the winter at first, but by 1936 they were using ‘triple assembly snowmobiles’ and could cover the distance in twenty-eight hours. Richard’s chief mechanic, Slim Koebke, got the credit for this innovation. He built the snow machines in the company shop.1) John Scott and his mother were running the Pelly Crossing roadhouse around 1933, and Slim Keobke would go through once in a while.2)
In 1937, W. Teare was prospecting on Caribou Creek in the Mt. Freegold area and found a boulder of vein quartz with visible gold. He found a number of small veins that he thought might be the source of the rich quartz and he staked the claim with the assistance of P. F. Guder. In 1938, T.C. Richards and Slim Keobke secured an option on the Caribou Creek property. They mined about sixty tons from an open cut on the side of the hill. They hand-picked fourteen tons of ore and put it through a 2-ton mill to produce an 84-ounce brick of gold carrying twenty percent of silver. This was the first gold brick produced from a lode gold deposit in southern Yukon. The small veins of gold looked good with fine gold visible everywhere, but the veins only went down between one to three feet, and once they were cleaned off there was no more gold. The property was abandoned late in 1938, and Richards obtained an option on the nearby Laforma group and started to develop it.3) Slim Keobke left the Yukon in 1953.4)