W. T. Edmonds
W. T. Edmonds was born in south Boston. He worked as a coal miner in the Algoma Coal and Coke Company of Algoma, West Virginia, the Turkey Gap Coal and Coke Company of Ennis, West Virginia and the Crozier Coal and Coke Company of the same state. Edmonds attended school at the Bluefield Institute in 1897 and travelled north in the same year. He reached Skagway in August 1897 and was employed packing freight over the Chilkoot Pass. He joined a party at Long Lake and travelled north with them. Two of the party turned back at Windy Arm but Edmonds took the boat and continued the trip. He and the rest of the party examined the coal vein five miles above Five Finger rapids and subsequently purchased the coal fields.1)
In the spring of 1897, the Five Finger Coal Company was incorporated with Edmonds as president, William Fondran as treasurer, and H. A. Barr as secretary. Edmonds was described as a bright, ambitious black man of about twenty-five years of age. The men secured 320 acres above George Carmack’s old coal discovery and drilled a test tunnel. Edmonds went on north to prospect on Bonanza and Eldorado creeks and ended up staking a claim on Green Gulch in the Dominion Creek drainage. He stampeded to Henderson Creek and staked No. 2 on Sixty Creek and No. 5 below on Henderson Creek. He stampeded to Chicken Creek and located No. 1 on Stone House Fork. He owned several other claims. Some of the money from his claims was invested in town property including a house and lot on Sixth Street and a lot of Forth Avenue. In 1898, some of the steamboat companies were making plans to test the coal for fuel because of the increasing scarcity of wood. The Five Finger Coal Company put on a line of barges during the summer to supply Dawson with coal for fuel during the winter.2)