Month: August 2010

Posted on

Black Cross Rock

On this day, August 3, 1898 while working on the railroad track at Mile 13, there was a rockslide. A huge rock slid down and buried two workers, Maurice Dunn and Al Jeneux. I have never been able to find any record of those two men, but the story continues to this day by the train agents. At the time, Michael J. Heney decided that it would be too dangerous and costly to blow up the rock to recover the bodies so they were left in place. At first there were rumors that there were more bodies, but White Pass announced that there were only two and erected a small cross with the names there at the rock.

legends

Posted on

Patrick Comer and John Stanley

On this day, August 2, 1903 two men went out fishing and never returned. They both drowned when they ran into trouble out in Lynn Canal. Patrick Comer was buried in the Skagway Gold Rush Cemetery but Mr. Stanley or Standley was shipped down to Seattle to be buried.
Stanley was the first Mayor of Skagway and joined the Arctic Brotherhood in 1899, he was 50 years old when he died. Comer was a fisherman and was 45 years old when he died.

Also died on this day was Herman Meyer, famous in this town for his building “Meyer’s Meat Market” which is now under reconstruction by the National Park Service on the corner of 5th and State Streets.
Meyer was a butcher, owned the Arctic Meat Company, and also managed the Arctic Telephone Company. He moved to Valdez in 1903 and died in Alaska on August 2, 1923.

Skagway death records; 1900 census; 1902 directory.