William Moore (1822-1909)
William Moore was born in Emden, Germany. He and his Dutch wife Hendrika emigrated to North America via Cape Horn.1) William came to British Columbia in 1852 during the gold rush to the Queen Charlotte Islands and he was in the Fraser River rush in 1858.2)
In 1861, word got out that Alexander “Buck” Choquette had found gold on a bar in the Stikine River. In the late spring of 1862, Moore ran the Flying Dutchman (a 92-foot paddlewheeler built in 1861 at Victoria) up the inside passage to Fort Wrangell where a Tlingit pilot was brought on board. Moore took 125 prospectors up the Stikine River on what was the first boat on the Stikine.3) Moore made two or three trips that summer and took the disappointed miners out in the fall. In the fall of 1872, Henry Thibert and his partner McCullough brought a poke of Cassiar gold into Fort Wrangell. This gold discovery excited Captain William Moore and his three sons Henry, J.W., and Wm. D. The Moores followed Thibert up the river after the ice broke up, poling and lining a scow up against the current.4) The Moores and four others arrived in the Dease Lake area in 1873.5) They staked claims on Thibert and Dease creeks.6) They eventually took out about a hundred thousand dollars in gold from their claims.7)
The Moore’s were the first to take riverboats make it above Glenora. Their Gertrude was a shallow-built, 120-foot-long boat with ten watertight compartments in case she was holed by submerged logs in the Stikine River.8) Moore then bought the Glenora and steamers Gem and Minnie came online in 1875. The Beaver came up from the Columbia in 1877, although she was lost in 1878. The old Nellie came from Puget Sound in 1878 and the Cassiar, owned by the old smuggler W.J. Stevens arrived in 1879. Moore bought the Grappler to run from Victoria to connect with his river boats, and he also ran the Western Slope from Victoria to the boundary on the Stikine to evade the US Customs. The Sardonyx came in 1880 as the trade was declining.9)
In June 1887, Moore accompanied Canadian surveyor William Ogilvie over the Coastal Mountains and into the Yukon.10) Moore’s sons were mining on the Yukon River and he believed they had struck it rich so he was on his way in to help them.11) Ben Moore met his father at the mouth of the Pelly River on August 12th and they travelled back to the coast together.12) William Moore returned to the future site of Skagway in the fall and established a homestead on the future site of Skagway.13)
When Captain Moore was 72 years old, he was in charge of the mail from Juneau. He made Fort Cudahy at Forty Mile in nineteen days and arrived on September 11th. He stayed there for three days, waiting for the steamer Arctic to arrive, and then started down the river hoping to meet the Arctic or the Bella. He arrived at Circle, Alaska where 150 men were eagerly awaiting the boats to leave for the winter. He and some others met the Bella a little below Fort Yukon. With winter impending, His companions persuaded Moore to turn around and leave via the lakes and so they boarded the Bella to go back up river. The trip was hard and very expensive as they bought moose meat along the way. The party reached the coast on 28 January 1897, thirty-seven days after leaving Fort Cudahy.14)
Moore reached Victoria on 19 February 1897 but was unable to raise much excitement about the business possibilities of a future Skagway. Nash and Richardson told stories of great riches to an excited Seattle audience and the Seattle Post Intelligencer called them the match starting a new gold rush.15) It took four years during the turmoil of the Klondike gold rush for Captain Moore and his son Ben to get their Skagway homestead legitimized. The Moores prevailed in 1901 after a series of court battles and settled 25 percent of everyone’s 1900 land assessment value to the residents of Skagway. William built a fine house (Pullen House) and operated lucrative businesses like his wharf. He moved back to Victoria in 1906.16)