White Horse Rapids, 1899. The rapids, an often fatal navigational hazard on the Yukon River, disappeared under Schwatka Lake when the Whitehorse Dam was completed in 1958. View full size.
[News accounts from the Gold Rush days often lumped all of the Far North under the heading “Alaska.” The events recounted here actually took place in Canada’s Yukon Territory.]
Marshfield Times / April 21, 1899
Bud Harkin Remembers His Cousin, Dan Harkin, With the Following Interesting Letter.
HOOTLINQUA [Hootalinqua], March 28, 1899.
D. F. HARKIN, ESQ., Marshfield, Wisconsin.
DEAR COUSIN: —
Your welcome and interesting letter received and to say that I was glad to hear from you would be putting it mild indeed. After a fellow has been holed up like a bear for five or six months, a few letters are a perfect Godsend. We were frozen in on the 5th of November and from that time until March did not hear a word from the outside. But the first part of this month I packed a blanket and 33 pounds of grub on my back and started for my mail, a nice little trip on snowshoes of 150 miles. I made the trip down, 75 miles, in three and one-half days. I had to break