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John David Murray (d. 1933)
John Murray began piloting riverboats on the Stikine River when he was in his teens. He was the captain on the sternwheeler Canadian on the Yukon River and in 1899 he built Murray’s Roadhouse at the junction of the Ridge Road and a spur road to Grand Forks in the Bonanza Creek valley.1) J.H. Downing applied for a liquor license for the Murray Road House on the Ridge Road sometime between 1899 and 1901.2)
In July 1902, John C. Murray and Donald Ross bought five acres on the Ridge Road at the intersection of the new road from Hunker Creek to Green Gulch. The location may never have been surveyed, and the Gold Commissioner considered it abandoned in 1913. There is no evidence of occupation.3)
Murray was the captain of the Bonanza King in 1906 when his son Phillip was killed in an explosion on the steamer Columbian. (Check source: Ida May Goulter, “History of Carmacks.” September 1977. Heritage Branch files. 77/8)) Murray was the master of the White Seal in 1907 and captain of the sternwheeler Keno in 1933 when he died on board at Stewart River.4)