Robert Henry McDonald

Robert Henry MacDonald was born in Hopewell, Nova Scotia.1) In 1902, he built the roadhouse on the Overland Trail 62.5 miles north of Whitehorse. The Whitehorse Star called it Nordenskiold, MacDonald's Roadhouse in 1902. In the 1902 list of White Pass stage stops it was listed as Nordenskiold and occasionally as Kynocks. There was a North-West Mounted Police barracks and stable here from 1902 to 1905.2) McDonald returned to Nova Scotia in 1902, married Ida Estella Falconer, and then returned to the roadhouse.3)

On August 13, 1905, John Sullivan went to Carcross to start laying out a road to the lower terminal of Conrad's tramway. Five days later, foreman Sam McGee and twenty men started work on the eleven-mile road. The men got four dollars a day plus board and Sam made five dollars and board. A wooden bridge was constructed upstream from the railway bridge under the direction of Robert Henry MacDonald, who formerly operated the Overland Trail MacDonald Roadhouse on the Nordenskiold River.4)

1)
Dawson City Museum vertical files.
2)
Greg Skuce and Barbara Hogan, “Historic Resource Inventory and Trail Assessment of the Southern Section of the Whitehorse-Dawson Overland Trail: Takhini Crossing to Carmacks.” Yukon Heritage Branch, 1998: 20.
3)
Yukon Archives, research file.
4)
Murray Lundberg, Fractured Veins & Broken Dreams: Montana Mountain and the Windy Arm Stampede. Whitehorse: Pathfinder Publications, 1996: 33.