Jim Washburn (d. 1896)
Jim Washburn was one of Forty Mile’s toughest prospectors. He was playing poker at Forty Mile when he thought he was being cheated. He attacked a fellow player with a knife and the man shot him.1) Author Pierre Burton says the victim was slashed across the belly and Washburn was shot through the hips in the altercation.2) By resident Anglican Bishop Bompas’ account there were about 210 white men wintering in the immediate vicinity and Bompas complained of saloons and distilleries. The two wounded men were warned that they would be run out of town if there was more trouble between them and the knife wielder was warned that he would be hanged if Washburn died of his wounds.3)
Bompas wrote letters to the Canadian government, asking for police protection. John Healy, partner in the NAT&T, and Charles Hamilton, store assistant manager at Fort Cudahy, wrote similar letters.4) These and other concerns from surveyor William Ogilvie caused the Canadian government to send the first detachment of North-West Mounted Police to the Yukon in 1895.
Washburn was killed at Circle in 1896 when bartender Jim Chronister shot him. A miners’ meeting was called at Circle, Alaska in 1896 and they came to a verdict of self-defense. Prospector and miner Jack Devine was not in town for the meeting but he understood that old man McGinnis, a one-time lawyer, sent the minutes of the meeting to Washington, DC where the court having jurisdiction approved the miners’ meeting verdict.5)