Robert H. Palmer
Bob Palmer was born in Saskatchewan. He owned and operated a hotel and general store in Keno Hill in the 1920s.1) In October 1920, Dr. Culbertson was called to treat Otto Kastner’s child. The child and his mother were on the sternwheeler Casca, So the doctor hired R.H. Palmer who got him to Yukon Crossing in fourteen hours.2)
In February 1926, Palmer and Harry Parker travelled to Whitehorse with Chas. Troughton on the P. Burns tractor. Palmer was taking delivery of his new Fordson tractor to be used in his freighting operations between Mayo and Keno.3) Chappie Chapman arrived in Mayo in the summer of 1928 and worked with Bob Palmer driving a two-ton truck hauling supplies from the dock to the store and hotel in Keno. When the Wernecke mine closed, Palmer went to Wells, British Columbia but returned when mining started up again. He built the Silver Inn Hotel and Café in Mayo.4)
In 1938, Bob Palmer bought Binet’s interest in his sawmill at the mouth of the Mayo River and changed the name from Binet and Lefebvre to Mayo Lumber Mills. After the Keno mine closed again in 1941, Palmer moved to Vancouver and sold the Palmer Hotel in Keno and the Silver Inn in Mayo.5)