Yukon who is who

James “Arkansas Jim” Hall (d. ~1909)

Jim Hall was born in Arkansas and came into the Yukon about 1886.¹⁾ In the fall of 1896, Claim No. 17 on Eldorado Creek was staked by Joseph “French Joe” Costello, and he sold it to James Hall and N.E. [Napoleon] Picotte. In the spring of 1897, Hall and Picotte realized how rich it was and gave Joe seventy-five feet of the claim which he shortly sold for a large sum of money. In 1897, Hall and Picotte had two lays working the property and fourteen men recovered $300,000. The claim had the widest pay streak of any claim in the country, extending from rim to rim, a distance of not less than 500 feet. The bedrock was from sixteen to twenty feet deep and no hole was sunk without showing rich pay.²⁾

James Hall invested in Dawson real estate and he owned the Green Tree Hotel. It was located on First or Main Street, parallel to the river. The downtown buildings were two-storey log structures including the M&M saloon and dance-hall, the Green Tree hotel, the Pioneer and the Dominion saloon, the Palace saloon and restaurant, and the Opera House. They were built close together with tents and smaller buildings in between. They faced a row of offices, restaurants and residences in rough buildings constructed out of slabs, and scows covered in tents. A fire ripped through the downtown area in 1899 and the Green Tree was burned to the ground.³⁾

In 1899, Hall married Lillian Green, a vaudeville actress from San Francisco. He invested in a Dawson theatre that over the years was known by many names. The theatre was built by Arizona Charlie Meadows in 1899 as the Grand Opera House. In October 1899, it was renamed the Palace Grand, in August 1900 it was the Savoy, and in 1901 it was the Old Savoy. Hall bought the Old Savoy and renamed it the Auditorium. In 1903, the Lillian Hall Stock Company performed the play Camille in the Auditorium for six weeks before moving the play on to Nome, Alaska. Lillian Hall inherited the theatre in 1909 after James died, and she sold it to Harry Abraham in 1912. The building was reconstructed by the federal government in 1961 and remains as a representative of Dawson gold rush theatres. The Palace Grand Theatre is a national historic site.⁴⁾

The Dawson City Museum has a portrait of James Hall circa 1903, a head and shoulders photo of James and Lillian Hall, and several scenes of Camille, performed by the Lillian Hall Stock Company. The museum also holds nine images of Lilliam M. Hall in various costumes, and one head and shoulders image. All of the photos are circa 1903, the height of Dawson as a ‘Paris of the North’.