Yukon who is who

William Humphry Swinehart (1855 - 1914)

William Swinehart was born in Wisconsin to a farming family. He attended a music academy, graduated from a business college, and worked as a bookkeeper. William and his wife Rhoda had four children by the late 1880s, and Rhoda died shortly after giving birth to their fifth child. William and his son Guy left for Juneau, Alaska in 1896 to join William’s brother George who was editor and publisher of the Juneau Mining Record.¹⁾

In the summer of 1897, William and George headed for the Klondike and at some point were joined by William Thompson and William’s brother-in-law Ham Kline. They arrived in the Yukon in April 1898 and William Swinehart, Thompson and Kline were still together three years later at Fort Selkirk. William Swinehart brought farming equipment over the Chilkoot Pass and the trio had four horses, ploughs, harrows, seed potatoes, cultivators, and provisions for a year and a half. They arrived at Fort Selkirk about 15 June 1898 and started clearing bush west of the community. They built a barn and a house and dug an irrigation ditch from a nearby creek.²⁾

The land he chose to develop had been settled by Frank Bach who submitted an application for 640 acres in the vicinity of Fort Selkirk. Swinehart started living on the land on 21 June 1898, and on 18 July 1901 applied for eighty acres three kilometres west of Fort Selkirk in lieu of Bach’s application of 2 March 1898. Swinehart paid the balance of the purchase price for the land to the government and it was surveyed for him. In November 1902 a land title was issued to Frank Bach.³⁾

Swinehart never did obtain title to the land he farmed for sixteen years. A road from Fort Selkirk ran through the valley containing the Swinehart farm and connected back to the Yukon River about eight kilometres below the settlement. It was part of the old winter trail used before the Overland Trail was built in 1902. The trail through the valley was upgraded to the farm and was used by the Yukon Telegraph that ran on to Dawson. It was surveyed as the Selkirk cut-off and connected to the Overland Trail further to the north and across the Yukon River. The Swinehart farm site is odd, as almost all other farms in central Yukon were located on navigable rivers. However, the farmland was good soil, and had a nearby source of water for irrigation, and the road to Fort Selkirk allowed access to the riverboat landing. The farm’s elevation likely protected it from the early frosts to which Fort Selkirk was susceptible.⁴⁾

The Swinehart farm was very successful. In 1903, the Yukon Sun reported that Swinehart had thirty acres under cultivation and a large tract of meadow land. His oat hay was among the finest feed for horses and he was selling a large quantity of vegetables to roadhouses and steamboats. In the spring, he marketed potatoes in Dawson. He would get a good price as he could reach the market three weeks before the sternwheelers from Whitehorse could bring produce as Lake Laberge was frozen long after the main river was free of ice. Swinehart reported that he invested his profits in mining. He, Ham Kline, and Billy Thompson mined about thirty miles away, in the nearby Selwyn River watershed.⁵⁾

In 1914, William Swinehart died a sudden death while working in his field. He is buried in the Yukon Field Force cemetery at Fort Selkirk. The farm was abandoned as his son and daughters were no longer living there.⁶⁾