Elmer Middlecoff (b. 1868)
Elmer Middlecoff was born in Clinton, Missouri. In 1898 he was told he had TB and was advised to send his wife Nell and their child to her parent’s home. He left for the Yukon, travelled up the Stikine, and arrived at Teslin Lake where he spent the winter of 1898-99 prospecting. In the spring of 1899, Elmer and George Black travelled outside, and Elmer brought Nell back with him. They arrived in Dawson in October 1899.1)
Elmer took a lay on a claim on Bonanza Creek and Ethel May was born in 1900. That summer Elmer got a mining claim fraction on a bench above Lovett Gulch.2) Middlecoff was mining on Bonanza Creek in 1902 when he heard about the strike on Highet Creek in the Mayo region. He staked some claims and worked both properties. (Yukon News (Whitehorse), 12 October 1983.)) Thinking he had recovered all the gold, he sold his claim on Lovett Gulch in 1905 to one of the dredging companies. They recovered an additional quarter million dollars.3)
Middlecoff moved his family to Seattle in 1905 and he wintered in Seattle and mined on Highet Creek in the summers after that. Nell gave birth to their fifth child in Dawson in 1916.4) Geologist Hugh Bostock described Middlecoff’s mining operation on Minto and Highet creeks. Mrs. Middlecoff and her daughter kept house while the old man and his son mined. The creek had large rocks, some as big as 100 pounds. They used a hydraulic monitor to wash the large rocks up a steeply inclined box while the fine material and gold fell through spaces in the bottom of the box and washed down into a sluice box laid at right angles to the inclined box.5)
Ed Bleiler married Elmer and Nell’s daughter Flora in 1936. In 1938, Flora's brother Elmer Jr. was killed in an accident on Highet Creek.6) He was found dead with his back broken after the monitor swung around and hit him.7) Middlecoff Sr. was 75 years old then, so Ed Bleiler joined him for four seasons until the war took all the young men and the mine closed down. Elmer Middlecoff was one of the biggest employers in the Mayo region for close to 40 years, hiring from 5 to 35 men a season.8)