Harold Harris “Buffalo” Pitts (1849 - 1913)
Harold Pitts was born in London, England.1)
In the spring of 1882, William Domingo Moore, John McGraw, John Rogers, Harold Harris Pitts, and Robert Adams left San Francisco aboard the State of California on a mission to search the north for gold. They spent a week in Juneau and then sailed on to Dyea. They organized their gear for three days and then hired eighty-two Chilkat packers to carry their gear to Lake Lindeman. There they built two large scows and set off on the lake on 12 July 1882. They floated down the river for almost two months, stopping to prospect along the way to Fort Reliance. Ladue, Rogers, Moore, and McGraw reached McQuesten’s trading post on 5 September 1882. They were the first prospectors to come that far by that route. On 8 September, McQuesten took them on a prospecting trip to the Sixtymile and they found some nuggets. The ground was frozen and they had to thaw it with a wood fire. By the time they returned to Ft. Reliance, Harold Pitts and Robert Adams were there with the party’s second scow. Another group arrived a few days later: Tom Kanals, James Carr, George Spangenberg, James Miller, Peter Scofield, Charley Powell, Jean Baptiste St. Louis, and Joseph Paris. All planned to stay the winter. Sometime after the river froze, Ladue and some others took supplies by hand sleigh and dogs to the upper reaches of the Sixtymile River and cached it for the following summer when they planned to return and prospect.2)
Arthur Harper established a post at Fort Selkirk in 1889 and at some time after that Pitts also moved to the site. William Douglas Johns reached Fort Selkirk and the trading station kept by “Buffalo Pitts” in 1896. Beside the store was a number of cabins and here was the first garden Johns had seen in the Yukon. Pitts had a small patch of potatoes and between each row were stakes with long strips of calico to be stretched over the plants in case of frost at night.3)
A list of signatories to a petition, dated 22 June 1900, protests the donation of public property to religious denominations. “H. H. Pitts, Mayor of Selkirk” is among those who signed.4) John Pitts, gen mdse, is listed in the Fort Selkirk section of Polks Oregon and Washington Gazetteer and Directory, 1911-1912: 506.)) Pitts ran the Fort Selkirk store until 1913.5)
Pitts died at Fort Selkirk in 1913 and is buried in the Yukon Field Force cemetery.6) In 1919, William Schofield and partners Art Zimmerlee and Alex Coward took over the old Pitt buildings at Fort Selkirk and set up a base for hunting, trapping and trading.7)