Joseph Francis Ladue (1854 - 1901)
Joe Ladue was born in Schuyler Falls, New York in 1854 to French Canadian immigrant parents Francois Ledoux and Marie Pelletier. He was one of eight children, four of whom survived beyond the age of ten. Joe joined the rush to the Black Hills, Dakota Territory in 1876 at age twenty-two and was followed by his brother Andrew. In 1880, Joe Ladue moved on to gold rushes in New Mexico and Arizona.1)
In the spring of 1882, Joe Ladue and five other men (William Domingo Moore, John McGraw, John Rogers, Harold Harris Pitts and Robert Adams) hired 82 Chilkats to pack their two-year supply of goods over the Chilkoot Pass from Dyea. They planned to winter at Fort Reliance, just downriver from present-day Dawson. They were the first prospectors to venture in by that route and the first to over-winter. The fur trader, Jack McQuesten, showed them a place to build their cabins at his Fort Reliance post. On September 8th, McQuesten took Ladue, Rogers, Moore and McGraw to the Sixtymile River where Harper had found some gold on ground that he thought would pay to mine. Pitts and Adams returned for the second loaded scow. A second party of prospectors arrived a few days later: Tom Kanals, James Carr, George Spangenberg, James Miller, Peter Scofield, Charley Powell, Jean Baptiste St. Louis, and Joseph Paris. They also stayed the winter at Fort Reliance.2)
During the summers of 1883-1886, Ladue prospected the bars of the Yukon, White, Sixtymile, and Stewart rivers. In the summer of 1886, he successfully mined the bars of the Stewart River and travelled down to Belle Isle (Eagle) in the fall to work as a trader with the Hän who lived along the river. That fall, coarse gold was found on the Fortymile River and Joe spent the following two seasons mining there.3) In the spring of 1888, Frank Densmore, George Matlock, Skiff Mitchell, Joe Ladue, and three others had a line of sluice boxes at Troublesome Point on the Fortymile, the first used in the Yukon drainage.4)
Finding little gold, Ladue entered into a partnership with Arthur Harper in 1890 and they established a trading post at Fort Selkirk and on an island at the mouth of the Sixtymile River. They grubstaked the miners, including Robert Henderson, and encouraged them to mine on the Sixtymile and Indian rivers. Henderson reported to Ladue that he had found gold on Gold Bottom Creek and encouraged Joe to move his sawmill to the mouth of the Klondike River. When Ladue travelled to the site, he was surprised to learn of the new strike on Bonanza Creek and immediately laid out a 160-acre townsite. On 27 August he submitted his application at Forty Mile and built the first cabin in the middle of what became Front Street in Dawson. He moved the sawmill early in September. Ladue's partner, Harper, died in November of TB and Ladue formed the Joseph Ladue Gold Mining and Development Company of Yukon and the Ladue Yukon Transportation Co. The business holdings included Ladue's share in the sawmill, the townsite, numerous claims on Bonanza, Eldorado, Bear, Sulphur, Gold Bottom, Hunker, and other creeks.5)
Ladue returned to Schuyler Falls in July 1897 as the founder of Dawson City and was proclaimed King of the Klondike and feted as royalty. In the six months after his return he travelled to Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Salt Lake City, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Ottawa (twice), San Francisco, and then travelled back to New York. He gave speeches, granted interviews, wrote a book, and met with President McKinley.6) He married Catherine “Kittie” Mason in mid-December. They purchased a home in Schuyler Falls and adopted the son of friend William Lamay, naming him Joseph Francis Ladue.7) In 1897, Dawson lots were selling for $5 to $29 each. He formed a partnership in the summer of 1897 that incorporated many of Dawson’s best lots. BY 1898, Dawson lots were selling for upwards of $20,000. Ladue made it back to Dawson for ten days in the summer of 1898 to find that squatters had overrun his townsite.8)
The Johnson-Locke Mercantile Company, of San Francisco, were agents for the Gold Pick Line, owned by the Ladue Yukon Transportation Company of which Joe Ladue was president. They dispatched a newly built triple expansion steamer, Grace Dollar, on 28 May 1899. Passengers for Dawson would transfer to the newly built, high-powered river boats and barges Rideout, Gold Star, Pinafore, and others. The steamer Morgan City was scheduled to leave on 1 June to connect with the Game Cock, Staghound, Powell, Alviso, Rideout, Gold Star and Clan Macdonald. The Johnson-Locke Mercantile Company, shipping and commission merchants, were general agents of the Joseph Ladue Gold Mining and Development Company of Yukon owned and it operated ten distinct lines of steamers in the Alaska trade. Joe Ladue was the president of the company.9)
After a few years of ill health, Joe Ladue died of tuberculosis at age 46.10)