George Scott (d. 1917)
George Scott lived in the Hootalinqua detachment in 1913 with his First Nations wife. He was Irish, a Cambridge graduate, a member of the New York Yacht Club, and the Royal Yacht Club at Cowes. He took winter river plunges at -30 degrees and rolled in the snow “to finish off.”1)
The residents of the Hootalinqua area repeatedly asked for mail delivery from 1900 to 1914. In February 1914, the mail contract was awarded to George Scott to deliver the Big Salmon and Hootalinqua mail via Braeburn.2)
During the winter of 1917/18, Scott was working with Charles Coghlan who had wood camps on both sides of the Yukon River at Hootalinqua.3) He left to take the mail run in December 1917 and froze on the trail in minus 60F degrees. They found him after the dogs chewed out of their traces and returned to camp.4) Scott's wife hauled his body and the mail back down the trail to Lower Laberge. She had to abandon his body and the sleigh when travelling on dangerous ice in the dark. The police retrieved George Scott’s body from the Thirtymile.5)