Del Charles van Gorder (1786 - 1953)

Del van Gorder came to the Yukon from Nebraska in the early 1900s.¹⁾ He had a trading post located at Pelly Lakes and he and Red Corning, also living at Pelly Lakes, went up the Pelly River in July 1905 on the Royal North-West Mounted Police boat Vidette. They travelled from Dawson via Fort Selkirk with enough supplies for a year in the bush, about 1,000 pounds per man. They met Joseph Click and Ira Van Bibber, partners of Corning and Van Gorder, at Lewis’ Nahanni Post.²⁾

There is a story that Del van Gorder and Ira van Bibber were friends and partners but political enemies. After they almost came to blows at Fort Selkirk, Rev. Cecil Swanson mediated by declaring that each should name the others’ first-born child. Republican van Gorder named van Bibber’s child Abraham after Abraham Lincoln, and Democrat Van Bibber named van Gorder’s child Jefferson.³⁾

Del van Gorder and his wife had two children, Jefferson and Mabel (Tootsie). Jefferson disappeared on a hunting trip in the Ross River area, and Mabel died of tuberculosis at Dawson [St. Paul’s Hostel?]. Van Gorder became the manager of the Taylor and Drury trading post at Pelly Banks in 1910. It was on the site of Robert Campbell’s old 1849 post at the mouth of the Pelly River. It was a very isolated post, and van Gorder stayed there until 1944. A sternwheeler brought his supplies up the Pelly River to Ross River once a year, and everything was transferred to poling boats for the 25 miles upriver to the mile-long portage at Hoole Canyon. Van Gorder ran the Taylor and Drury trading post at Pelly Banks until 1944 and then the company’s post at Ross River until 1949 when he and his second wife retired to Teslin.((Delores Smith, “Van Gorder lured by the lust for gold.” The Whitehorse Star (Whitehorse), 31 May 1995.)