William Liggett (b. 1860)
William Liggett was a farmer’s son from Holly Grove, Upshur County, West Virginia.1) He came to the Yukon River drainage in the spring of 1889 and secured a profitable claim on the Fortymile River.2) William Liggett was [Howard Hamilton] Hart’s partner in the early days on the Yukon.3)
In 1890, newspaper reporter E. Hazard Wells found Liggett mining an unprofitable property. Liggett accepted a job from Wells to pack one hundred pounds of provisions to the Tanana River for the Frank Leslie Expedition. After his contract was completed, Liggett returned to mining.4)
In 1891, he was at Birch Creek, Alaska in the Circle City mining district and cleaned up $7,000 at the end of the season. He travelled south to Buchanan, West Virginia and bought real estate. He came back to the Yukon and mined on Miller Creek where again he was successful.5) He invested again in West Virginia farm mortgages.6) He returned to his Miller Creek claim and was there when gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek. Liggett heard about the strike several weeks later and abandoned his claim and about $1200 worth of equipment to head to the Klondike.7)
Liggett arrived in Dawson in April 1897 and offered the owner of Claim No 13 on Eldorado Creek $31,250 for a three-eighth interest in the ground. His partners turned out to be Messrs Chute with one-eighth interest, Bill Gates with two-eighth interest, Tom Mallory with an eighth, and Turner with an eighth. Liggett was only worth $10,000 at best so he went into debt for the entire amount of his interest, promising to pay when he hit bedrock. His partners considered him the most competent to run the mine and made him superintendent at twenty dollars per day. He only had a sixty-day season so he worked day and night with his employees. The ground was richer than the owners had thought, and they would have taken back his interest if he had missed paying the full amount on time. Liggett had no problem making his payment. The paystreak went the length of the claim and was from ninety to one hundred feet wide. The paydirt was from two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half feet in thickness and had a ribbon of pure gold about twelve inches deep and a quarter to three-eighth inches deep. The pay gravel had quantities of coarse gold dust and was studded with nuggets like ‘plums in a pudding.’ In March 1898, about seventy feet of the five hundred had been mined and had yielded $140,000, averaging $2000 to the linear foot in the paystreak. The largest nugget was worth $10, and pans of $100 and $150 were common.8)
All winter, Liggett payed his twelve employees every Saturday by panning out some paydirt beside his cabin stove. The men made $12.50 a day. He told his friend that he wanted to sell the unworked portion of the claim for about $100,000 and go to the tropics and try mining there. He claimed the northern climate was breaking him down. Claim 13 was originally staked by Joe Hollingshead who sold one half interest in it for $1000 and got rid of the other half before the big find was made.9) The later miners recovered an estimated million and a quarter dollars from the claim. As promised, Liggett sold the undeveloped portion of the claim for a good price in late summer 1898 and left the Yukon with the goal of becoming a banker.10)
A sketch from Hazard Well’s photograph of Bill Liggett at his home on the Klondike was printed in the Cincinnati Post. (E. Hazard Wells, Magnificence and Misery. Doubleday & Company, 1984: 117.))