William Mackenzie
William Mackenzie and Donald Mann were experienced in the rapid building of railways.1) In January 1898, they signed contracts with Ottawa to build a narrow-gauge railway from the Stikine River, near Telegraph Creek, to the southern end of Teslin Lake.2)
Federal Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton, was concerned with trying to find a travel route from the coast that avoided American territory as much as possible. He favoured a route explored by engineer Charles Jennings and surveyor St. Cry from Fort Wrangle on the coast to Telegraph Creek where a proposed road or railway would go to Teslin Lake and a water route to Dawson. Sifton liked this route because Canada had rights to navigation at Wrangle under the treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, inherited by the United States.3)
The Mackenzie and Mann contract required them to build a winter road and then a light construction railway, using the standard of the Kaslo-Slocan road in British Columbia, 240 kilometres from Telegraph Creek to Teslin Lake by September 1st. They were to have a later option of extending the line south and west to a Canadian port and north to Dawson. They were authorized to build docks and smelters and they were protected from any railway constructed over Canadian land from the Lynn Canal ports. They were to be given a land grant of 25,000 acres of land per mile in the territory through which it ran, they could not take lakes or rivers, the claim had to be distributed over a large area, protected mining claims could be staked up to June 15th, and there were provisions protecting settlers and guarding against freight discrimination. The railway company put up $25,000 in cash to guarantee that the contract would be fulfilled.4)
Cifford Sifton supported the bill to charter a railway on the Stikine River route but it was defeated by the Senate in March 1898.5) The project was abandoned after only twelve miles of track was laid.6)