Jack Dalton (1856 – 1944)
Jack Dalton was born in Ishpeming, Michigan or across the border in Canada, to parents Johanna and Joseph Dalton. The family moved to Kansas and Jack left home as a young man to work many jobs across the American west. There are various stories about why Dalton left Oregon and travelled north, but he arrived in Sitka in March 1885. He brought May Click, who had been his cook at a lumber camp, and they were married. In the spring of 1886, Dalton was working at a fish packing plant and that summer he was hired by leader Frederick Schwatka as a cook and general woodsman for an expedition to climb Mt. St. Elias and explore the area around Yakutat.1)
Dalton staked a mining claim near Yakutat Bay and convinced a few men in Sitka that the find had good prospects. There was some excitement, but nothing came of it. Dalton continued to prospect, and his wife died while he was on an extended trip. He found a coal outcrop and mined for a season before leaving Sitka in the fall of 1889. In 1890, Dalton and Frank Price guided the Frank Leslie Exploring Expedition into the headwaters of the Copper River. E. Hazard Wells was the expedition leader, and he was joined by E.J. Glave and A. B. Schanz. Using the Chilkat trading route, they crossed the Chilkat Pass and made it to Nesketahin on the Tatshenshini River. They reached Yakutat in early August where Dalton was surprised to learn that a glacier at the head of the bay had been named for him as the pioneer explorer of the region.2)
Dalton and Glave were in each other’s company for five months, and they planned the expedition they took to the Alsek headwaters in 1891. Dalton was already making plans to open up the Tlingit trail into the interior. In 1892, Dalton signed a contract with Richard H. Hoag to establish a trading post in the interior, but Hoag disappeared and the post was never built. Dalton was determined to open a post himself. In 1893 he accused Daniel McGinnis of telling the Chilkat that he (Dalton) was planning to open a post and rob them of their trade income. McGinnis was shot and killed in the confrontation and Dalton was accused of murder. Dalton went on trial in Juneau and lied, saying that McGinnis had threatened his life. Eyewitness Patrick Woods testified that McGinnis was unarmed, and that Dalton shot McGinnis with intent. Dalton testified that the shooting was accidental, and the jury delivered a not guilty verdict, stunning the citizens of Juneau. A meeting was held, Dalton was told to leave the territory, and he and his wife and young son took a steamer to San Francisco.3)
In 1894, Jack Dalton saw an opportunity to use the Chilkat trail to supply Forty Mile. Supply boats from St. Michael, near the mouth of the Yukon River, usually made one trip a summer and if they failed to arrive, some miners on the Fortymile River were forced to leave the country. The typical route of the Chilkat Trail skirted Dezadeash Lake, went to Hutshi Lake, and then followed the banks of the Nordenskiold River to the Yukon River just downriver from Five Finger Rapids. Here there was plenty of timber to build rafts. A footpath from Five Finger led to Fort Selkirk, forty-five miles downstream. In the spring of 1894, Dalton and J. Kinnon took a pack train of horses from the coast to the Yukon River and built a raft to carry Dalton’s goods downriver. Before he reached Forty Mile, a man [Ray Stewart] bought his entire shipment for the new town of Circle, Alaska further down river.4) Ray Stewart bought Dalton’s three horses, raft, and outfit and traded one half interest in the outfit to George Carey for one-half interest in his claim on Mastadon Creek, No. 21.5)
When McKinnon returned to Juneau in the fall, he talked about using Dalton’s Trail, and this was the first time the name was seen in print. In January 1895, Dalton was in Seattle with fourteen horses, a wagon and thirty-five tons of freight booked on the next steamer to the mouth of the Chilkat. It was rumoured that some of his stock was in smuggled whiskey. He stopped at Juneau where John Malony put up $6,000 as capitol in a general trading business called J. Dalton and Company. Dalton built a post a mile upstream from Nesketahin and this became Dalton Post [Shawshe] or Dalton House.6)
A company called Goodall, Perkins & Co. started looking at the Chilkat Pass around 1895 as a quick and practical transportation route between the Chilkat River and Circle, Alaska. They sent several hundred sheep and cattle to Juneau and from there to the head of navigation at the Chilkat River on the steamer Alki. Dalton took the animals over the Pass and up to the Yukon River near Fort Selkirk.7)
In the summer of 1896, Dalton was rafting down the Yukon River with supplies for Forty Mile. He stopped at Joe Ladue’s trading post at the mouth of the Sixtymile River. Dalton knew Ladue having previously sold him some horses. Ladue told Dalton that he was running out of timber for his sawmill and was looking for a new site. Dalton recommended the mouth of the Klondike where an eddy would draw the logs right into the shore. He offered to take Ladue there, about forty miles downstream. They were having dinner at the mouth of the Klondike when they heard about Carmack’s strike from two miners rushing up to Bonanza Creek. Ladue decided to stake a townsite and Dalton continued on his way to Forty Mile where he was to discuss business for his trail with Canadian officials.8) In August 1896, Dalton met with William Ogilvie and Charles Constantine at Forty Mile in hopes of receiving a freighting contract. He said he could deliver two or three tons of supplies to the Yukon River every month. Ogilvie was interested and planned to go over the Dalton Trail in the fall but the gold discovery on Bonanza Creek interfered with those plans.9)
In March 1897, Dalton went to Seattle to buy steers. The Canadian government was interested in finding routes to the Klondike and surveyor J. J. McArthur was assigned to map the Dalton Trail. McArthur was outfitted by Dalton and Company and joined Dalton’s cattle drive up the trail. On this trip, Dalton tried a short cut to Fort Selkirk. He drove them into the hills north of Hutshi Village, but the ground was like a sponge, and it took ten days of hard traveling to reach Fort Selkirk. Dalton slaughtered some of the cattle and sent the meat downriver by steamer, and then put the live cattle on a raft. Many men left Dawson in September 1897and a Juneau newspaper reported that 150 to 200 men went out over the Dalton Trail. The trail was reported to be in good condition and Dalton rented horses to those who could afford them. Dalton left Dawson in mid-October and met eleven men at Fort Selkirk where there was a foot of snow. He led the party out over the Dalton Trail, and they made it to Pyramid Harbor in forty-two days. They passed the ill-fated Willis Thorp cattle drive going in.10)
During the Klondike gold rush, Dalton claimed the trail between Fort Selkirk and the coast as his own and charged the cattle drivers a toll to use it. In June 1898, Dalton had two hundred horses and organized a pack train freight service between Five Finger Rapids and the coast. The freight service was briefly successful until the steamers, using cables to ascend the rapids, offered a better and cheaper rate to Whitehorse.11) Dalton cut his price to $150 but horses stood idle along the trail, and then an equine disease spread through the herd.12)
In July 1898, Dalton and Henry Bratnober decided to explore the headwaters of the White River and look for the rumoured deposits of copper. Bratnober had travelled with Dalton to Dawson in 1897 and was excited about the mining possibilities in the north. They travelled up the White River by horse and explored for a month, then returned to Dalton Post with a hundred-pound sack of copper nuggets. They did not stake any claims as the copper deposit was remote with no way of getting the ore out. Then gold was discovered on Porcupine Creek up from its confluence with the Klehini River. Dalton was on the river when the Porcupine Mining District was formed. He made an agreement with the discoverers and recorded a one-quarter interest in the Discovery Claim. He was reported as saying the ground was worth $150 to the pan, but it was really more like a recovery of $150 per day. That fall, the Juneau prospectors stampeded into the snow-covered area and Dalton went to Seattle to try and get formal approval to charge a toll on the Dalton Trail. He also brought in a large order of supplies to sell. In October 1899, the border was temporarily set, and the Porcupine River was on the U.S. side. Discovery Claim yielded $40,000 in gold and Dalton predicted a lively camp. He built a warehouse in Haines to hold his goods. Hundreds of miners used his road and paid the one-dollar toll. Dalton operated pack-trains along the route and in the Porcupine District. That fall, he and Ed Hanley purchased a controlling interest in the Porcupine Discovery Claim.13)
In the spring of 1900, Dalton and Hanley’s Porcupine Trading Company won a $100,000 contract to supply fresh beef to the American troops stationed at Eagle, Fort Yukon, and Rampart, Alaska. That fall, Dalton travelled to Europe and stopped to see his parents in Kansas. When he returned north, he found the residents of Haines were using and promoting a new route up the Chilkat River pioneered in 1896 by the cattleman Willis Thorp. Dalton also lost a court case to keep the competition off his end of the Haines wharf. The claim at Porcupine, however, was all good news as it was very rich. That was until 1901 when a flash flood wiped out his flume, buried his equipment, and obliterated the mining shafts. Dalton rebuilt, but his other operations were neglected.14)
In June 1903, Dalton and Henry Bratnober visited the White River area again but had a falling out after only 150 miles. Bratnober wanted to continue, but instead the men split up with Bratnober retuning to the coast and Dalton going on to the new boom town of Fairbanks. He stayed for a brief time, rode on to Circle, and then returned to Porcupine by September.15)
In May 1904, Dalton’s hotel in Porcupine burned, but Dalton was already building a new hotel in Haines next to Fort Seward, the large American military station. American and Canadian survey crews were starting to survey the border and Dalton’s company had a boat to transport the men and supplies on the Chilkat River. New equipment had been installed on the Porcupine River claims and the sluice boxes were full of gold in the first clean-up in 1905. Before the boxes could be cleaned another big flood destroyed the sluice run and buried the equipment under tons of soil and gravel. The partners gave up on mining.16)
In the fall of 1905, M.J. Heney contracted Dalton to look at a rail route from Cordova, Alaska along the Copper River into the Wrangel Mountains. Dalton had a crew of ten men plus the surveyor J.L. McPherson. After six weeks in very cold weather, Dalton wired Heney that the route was possible and Heney filed for the right of way. Dalton grubstaked the cook from his crew who located a copper claim on the future ground of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway. There were accusations of inside knowledge, but the claim was a valid copper deposit. In the spring of 1906, Dalton prepared for a final cattle driver over the Dalton Trail, this time to Fairbanks. He built scows in Whitehorse and met Hanley and three hundred head of cattle at Fort Selkirk. The floated down the Yukon River to Circle and then went overland to Fairbanks. Dalton, Hanley and a third partner, Malony, still had the townsite and claims on the Porcupine but were looking for a way to sell them. J. H. Conrad and a business associate bought the mine, townsite, sawmill and all the remaining equipment for $125,000 in February 1907. In March, Dalton returned from a trip to the east coast and went to his copper claims he had staked on the White River. He had a cabin on Kletsan Creek, eight miles up the White River and sponsored a group of prospectors. He was back in Alaska at Cordova in the summer and in an argument over rights to use a dock at the townsite.17)
In 1910, Dalton was involved in James Wickersham’s successful campaign for congress. Wickersham was an opponent of the Guggenheim monopoly of the land and resources around Cordova. In 1913, Dalton took on a contract to deliver coal from a tributary of the Matanuska River to Cook Inlet. In 1914, Dalton received a contract as chief packer for the Alaska Engineering Commission. The Commission was created to determine the route for a railroad into interior Alaska. In 1916, Dalton sold his extensive holdings in Cordova and he and his wife and children moved south.18)