Yukon who is who

George B. Swinehart

George Swinehart was editor and publisher of the Juneau Mining Record in 1896. [The Juneau City Mining Record ceased publication in 1894 and its succeeding title was the Alaska Mining Record existing in Juneau from 1894 to 1899.] In the summer of 1897, William and George Swinehart headed for the Klondike, joined by William Thompson and William brother-in-law Ham Kline.¹⁾

George shipped a printing plant from the west coast and it remained at St. Michael for the winter. George brought a light makeshift printing plant with him baggage.²⁾ The Swineharts arrived in the Yukon in April 1898 and on 16 May 1898, George put out the only issue of the Caribou Sun while they were enroute waiting for the ice to go out of the lakes.³⁾

The party arrived at Fort Selkirk about 15 June 1898 and George left the group to continue on to Dawson. In Dawson, he published the first issue of the Yukon Midnight Sun on 11 June 1898.⁴⁾ The paper was the first Dawson newspaper produced on a printing press, a quarter-sized, eight-page edition. It was mostly local and mining news, as it was printed before the telegraph line was built, but it did have brief items on the Spanish-American war and an Anglo-French dispute in West Africa. The bigger press arrived in Dawson on the sternwheeler John J. Healy on 9 July 1898. The 18 July edition of the Yukon Midnight Sun was a dozen full-sized pages. The Sun, versus the anti-government Klondike Nugget, evolved into a defender of the government while still pressing for reasonable reform.⁵⁾