Yukon who is who

Paul Fred “Fritz” Guder (1895 - 1981)

Fred Guder was born south of Breslau, Silesia. He worked as a cabinet maker in Saxony before leaving Europe.¹⁾ He came to the Yukon via Panama, San Francisco, and Seattle.²⁾ He sailed to Skagway in 1912 and travelled to Dawson where he cut wood and worked on the dredges.³⁾

In 1913, Guder refused to return to Germany when he was called on to do so. When the First World War started in 1914, the Mounted Police briefly detained him and confiscated his rifle. He complained that he could not live without it and it was returned to him.⁴⁾ On the advice of Poole Field, he moved to the Pelly River where his nationality was of no concern. At Ross River he helped Tom Bee at his trading post.⁵⁾ He had to regularly report to the police at the Ross River post where he got ammunition and supplies every few months.⁶⁾ In 1918, Guder trapped in the Nahanni River area, and he set up a trapline at Pelly Lakes in 1919.⁷⁾

Oil was discovered at Norman Wells in the summer of 1921 and that winter Tom Bee, Fred Guder, Frank Etzel, Joe Ladue and others stampeded over the Selwyn and Mackenzie mountains and mushed up the old Fort Norman trail to the oilfields in twenty-two days. They staked claims and returned to the Yukon and then to Edmonton by way to Skagway to file.⁸⁾

Seymour Creek, a tributary of Big Creek, was first prospected in 1916 when Henry Seymour Back and his team were in the area. The discovery claim was re-staked by P. F. Guder in 1917.⁹⁾ In 1924, he set up camp on Seymour Creek. Guder already knew this area because in 1914, Back had hired Guder to take him through the Dawson Range and had pointed out his discoveries in the area. Guder put in test shafts on Seymour, Bow, Foster, Kitchener, Porcupine, Guder, Revenue, and Mechanic creeks but did not have great success in finding a concentration of placer gold.¹⁰⁾ In the spring of 1929, while walking over an intervening mountain, Guder found rich gold exposed at the surface. He named the mountain Mt. Freegold and soon found other mineralized sites on it. The news of an assay return of $380 spread quickly and a rush ensued. About 100 claims were staked and many men prospected the creeks for placer gold, but Guder's was the only placer mine. Billy Langham arrived long after the rush and purchased claims from some First Nation prospectors who had located them during the winter. Langham and his partners benefited more than those in the initial rush. Guder placer mined whenever he needed money, and he worked claims on Revenue and Mechanic creeks and Cabin Gulch. He found a major find on Revenue Creek.¹¹⁾

Revenue Creek, a tributary of Big Creek, was first prospected by Fred Guder in the 1930s and staked in 1947. He named it “Revenue” because he could always get a grubstake out of the ground. This creek produced the most gold for Guder of all the creeks he mined, and he worked it in shallow hand diggings until 1966.¹²⁾ In 1931, Hugh Bostock noted Guder’s ingenuity in using in constructing a blowtorch using tin cans, brass cartridge cases, and other scrap metal. He also built boom gates that allowed him to use the spring runoff to dig prospect trenches on the slopes of the mountain.¹³⁾

Guder was proud of his German heritage but when the Second World War loomed he refused to join the “German bund” of German and Austrian Yukoners started by a Nazi organizer.¹⁴⁾ Fred Guder became a Canadian citizen in the 1950s.¹⁵⁾

In 1966, Arthur “Blondy” Warville optioned Guder’s ground. He was supposed to stake Guder's lease into claims in Guder's name but instead let the lease lapse and staked the ground in his own name. Guder sued him and won.¹⁶⁾ When Ron Granger first met Guder, he was seventy-two years old but he could still sink a shaft twenty feet deep in three days’ time and he could walk ten miles on a mountainside without resting. A month before his final stroke he showed Granger a map of every deposit he knew of, saying someone should keep looking.¹⁷⁾

Fred Guder died of a stroke in Whitehorse. Yukon Archives holds 160 of Guder’s photographs in three albums, and a photocopied diary 1944-1948.¹⁸⁾