Edwin W. Gideon (d. 1925)
Edwin and Bessie Gideon came into the Yukon over the Dyea trail in 1898 and lived for a time in Dawson.1) In 1904, the Gideons leased the Canyon Roadhouse at Canyon River on the trail to Bullion and Ruby creeks in the Kluane region. It was owned by Sam McGee and his partner.2)
After Dawson Charlie died in 1908, his Caribou Hotel in Carcross went to Annie Auston and she leased it to Edwin and Bessie Gideon. Jack Stewart financed the building of the Caribou Hotel for Bessie and Edwin Gideon after the original building burned in 1909. The new twenty-room hotel was designed by architect J.J. Killam and included the latest in building techniques. Its final cost was about $14,000.3) In October 1910, the first railway excursion from Whitehorse to Carcross marked the dedication of the recently completed Caribou Hotel.4)
In 1918, James Alexander travelled outside the Yukon and asked the Gideons, at the Carcross Caribou Hotel, to look after his male parrot, Polly. The Alexanders died when the SS Sophia sank in the Lynn Canal. The parrot lived for another fifty years at the Carcross hotel.5)
In the fall of 1920, Gideon remodelled the old Scott hotel building in Carcross as the Caribou Hotel had inadequate space to accommodate the growing tourist business in the area.6) In June 1921, George Yoshida had made arrangements with Gideon to operate the dining room of the Caribou Hotel in Carcross.7)
Edwin Gideon suffered a stroke and never fully recovered a few years before his death in October 1925.8) Annie Auston owned the ground under the Caribou Hotel and the Gideons were trying to buy it when Mr. Gideon died. Mrs. Gideon could not keep up the payments, but Annie let Mrs. Gideon stay and run the hotel until she died.9) She also let Louise Dawson, the sole beneficiary of Mrs. Gideon’s will, run the hotel with her son and wife. The Dawsons and the Corbys gave up the lease in 1938, a few months before Annie Auston’s death. Annie’s adopted son Bobby inherited the hotel.10)