Oscar Miller

Oscar Miller was a sailor before he jumped ship at Skagway in 1898 to join the Klondike stampede. In the late 1940s, he lived in a small cabin on the slope of Galena Hill above Elsa. He had two or three claims which he unsuccessfully tried to sell to United Keno. When the tramway cable between Hector and Elsa broke, Brodie Hicks, the mine manager, asked Oscar to help and he was able to build in a splice about twenty-five feet on each side of the break. Half the mining crew had arrived to watch, and he put them to work unravelling and re-ravelling the cable. After the job was done, Oscar refused to take any money as he said Yukoners did not take money for favours. He was still a little grumpy about not being able to sell his claims. Oscar disappeared from the hills a year or two later, and Hicks assumed that he had received enough money from somewhere to leave town.¹⁾