J. Benard Moore (1865-1919)
Ben Moore was the youngest son of William Moore. Father and son ran the steamer Alaskan between Wrangell and Telegraph Creek in 1862. The Moores returned to Victoria at the end of the season. Ben sailed on the mail steamer Idaho from Victoria in March 1887. He was bound for the Fortymile River, having heard rumours of the gold strike. During that summer, he piloted the steamer New Racket down the Yukon River to St. Michael.1)
William Ogilvie was coming into the interior in 1887 to determine the 141st Meridian where the International Boundary crossed the Yukon River. He hired Captain William Moore who wanted to find his sons William and Ben. Moore planned to meet his sons and then find his own way back out of the country. On 8 August [or 12 August], Ogilvie’s crew met miners poling their way out of the territory for the winter and one boat had four men in it including Hank Summers and Ben Moore.2) William Moore left Ogilvie and travelled to the coast with his son. They had flat-bottomed boats which Ben and his friends had poled and hauled from Forty Mile. Ben was 22 years old that year. Billie Moore, Ben's brother, remained in Forty Mile for the winter.3)
Ben met his future wife Klinget-sai-yet (Minnie Elizabeth), the daughter of Chief George Shotridge, at a potlatch near Haines in 1889.4) They were married in 1891.5) They had three children: Bennie, Edith and Frances. Benie and Edith attended boarding school in Tacoma.6) Ben and Minnie lived for two summers at Skagway in the little five-by-five-meter log cabin he and his father built. It was the first home in Skagway. The entire interior of the cabin was papered with newspapers dating from the 1880s and 1890s and came from California, Canada, Ohio, New York, and England. There were pages from Harper's Weekly, Scientific American and The Illustrated News of the World.7)
In 1894, Ben and his father built a schooner at Berner's Bay. Ben was living in Juneau in 1895 when seven prospectors arrived from California on their way to Hootalinqua. He went with them and helped them with their load over the White Pass as far as the second canyon. This was the first party of prospectors to use the White Pass into the Yukon. In 1896, Captain William Moore got the government contract to deliver the mail into the Yukon. He was 74 by that time but he and Ben fulfilled the contract. They received $600 a round trip. Moore met Ben in May at Skagway and arranged for him to receive the second shipment of mail. In July 1897, Ben Moore persuaded Captain Carroll of the mail steamer Queen to use the wharf at Skagway. Next to arrive was the Islander skippered by Captain John Irving, William Moore's old friend and rival. Skagway became a town overnight.8)
Ben left Skagway in 1906 and moved to Tacoma.9) Minnie divorced him in 1909, and he died a poor man in San Francisco. His journals, published as Skagway in Days Primeval, are an important primary resource for the gold rush.10)
Bernard Lake was named for Ben Moore who helped establish the White Pass Trail. Unofficially named “Fraser Lake,” the lake is located at Mile Post 27.7 and on the Klondike Highway at kilometre 36.5, adjacent to the Fraser station.11)