William H. “Bill” McPhee (1853-1934)
William McPhee was born in Ontario.1) He went to Juneau and worked at the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island.2) He travelled over the Chilkoot Pass in the spring of 1888. He outfitted in Juneau and with his partners built a boat at Lake Lindeman which took them to the mouth of the Fortymile. McPhee was among the first to establish a business and he built a two-story log hotel of considerable size; the most palatial along the river.3) His partners were Harry Spenser and Frank Densmore. It had an attached dance floor and meeting room.4)
McPhee was treasurer of the first lodge of the Yukon Order of Pioneers (YOOP) at Forty Mile in 1894. The YOOP bylaws restricted membership to those who had been in the Yukon watershed since 1888.5)
In the fall of 1896, Clarence Berry got a grubstake from Bill McPhee who owned the Caribou Hotel in Forty Mile.6) McPhee remained in Forty Mile until the Birch Creek excitement of 1894 and he moved there immediately after. He was one of the principal builders at Circle City, erecting the largest log building in the world’s largest log-cabin community. He was a successful miner in the goldfields at Circle and on the Fortymile.7)
McPhee was in Circle City running a saloon when gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek. Circle City was soon abandoned so McPhee closed up his saloon and joined the stampede. He got himself a good claim on Bonanza and then sent back to Circle for his supplies. In a few weeks he was set up in a tent, after that in a shack, and then built a good log house in 1898. Early in the spring of 1897, he went over the ice and on to San Francisco to get a large stock of supplies including liquor and tobacco and sent them in by boat from St. Michael.8)
Ed Lung went to the Klondike in 1897. He met Bill McPhee and Ben Everett in Skagway or Dyea. They were getting together a party of men to travel with them over the Chilkoot and they were acting as guides, saying they knew the Klondike well. Lung and Stacy talked of joining them, but they were charging an exorbitant fee. When they met again in Dawson, McPhee owned a saloon and Ben Everett was operating the roulette wheel. McPhee was a tall, broad-shouldered Scot with a frank jovial manner and a hearty laugh.9)
McPhee was a stockholder in Dawson’s Yukon Telephone and Telegraph Syndicate. The business was organized by E, Leroy Pelletier in the fall of 1897 and other stakeholders included Alex McDonald, Dr. LeBlanc, Geo Demars, and John Ericson. The syndicate had received its plant, eighty miles of wire, twenty-five long-distance transmitters, a hundred drop-switch boards and a complete outfit. The company planned to run lines up the gulches and establish a city exchange.10) McPhee [and his partners] owned the Pioneer Saloon in Dawson from 1897 to 1899.11) During the fall of 1898, the owners of the Pioneer Hotel recruited a man named Fuller as a booster. They paid for his meals and trip from Juneau to Dawson and when he arrived, he owed $650. To get his money back, Frank Densmore put him to work cleaning bedrock, but his mine manager fired him for putting too much gold in his pockets. Fuller had a talent for making money and he made a lot by buying up rich claims for J. Healy of the NAT&T Company and making side deals with McPhee. Fuller was hired by Densmore & Co. as the accountant for the Pioneer Hotel. When Densmore got sick, McPhee took him outside leaving Harry Spencer, a three percent owner, to run the business with Fuller, who apparently knew nothing about bookkeeping. The Pioneer was running three shifts with four bartenders and four helpers to the shift and all exchanges were in gold dust.12)
Densmore was sick in San Francisco, but he wanted to get back to the mountains, so they compromised on Denver. John Lind stayed with him for a week until Densmore appeared to be getting better, but a week later Lind received a wire that Densmore was dead.13) The story went that in the fall of 1898 Spencer drank himself sick, dying on Thanksgiving Day, and Densmore died at the same hour. Fuller was left running the saloon, a half dozen claims, and the telephone exchange owned by Densmore & Co. He was appointed administrator for both Densmore and Spencer.14)
When his Dawson partners died, McPhee moved on to Nome and went into the freighting business.15) McPhee had a saloon there as well. Tex Rickard was one of McPhee's right-hand men, enforcing law and order. Bill Owens was involved in many of McPhee's undertakings, and worked as a bartender. From Nome, McPhee went to Fairbanks and then to Tanana. His saloon there burned down, but he rebuilt.16) Clarence Berry was rich from his Klondike mines, and remembering McPhee’s generosity to him in the past, sent a telegram to McPhee telling him to rebuild, restock, and draw on him for all the money he needed.17) When prohibition came, McPhee retired to California.18)