What three things are missing from the front of AB in this picture that are here today?
Answer tomorrow.
Fred and Clara Patten
Fred Patten was born in Nebraska in 1873 and Clara was from Wisconsin. They met and married in Auburn, Washington and had a daughter there in 1900. They had moved here to Skagway around that time. Sadly, Clara died on this day, December 14, 1905 of blood poisoning and is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery.
Fred stayed on and made a partnership with Chris Shea as carpenter and contractor. Together they wrote a book called “The Soapy Smith Tragedy” in 1907. (If you can find this book, it is worth quite a bit now.)
By 1907-1908, Skagway’s glory days as a gold rush boomtown had passed. Vacant buildings, derelict shacks and debris were visible everywhere. One visitor described Skagway as “the scrap-heap of creation.”
In an attempt to revitalize the town, Fred and Chris led a drive to centralize the town’s business district on Broadway. In 1908, Shea and Patten purchased two barracks, sawed the longer one in half, and moved all three to their present location on Broadway. The two halves were remodeled with a new false front to make up the Pack Train Inn and the Trail Saloon. By 1910 they had both moved on.
The building currently houses a fur store and a diamond store in the summer and says “U-Ah-to-no” on the side.
Washington records online; 1880 and 1900 census; Skagway death record
The old city hall building
Unbelievably this building is still standing and I walk by it each night on the way home. It is falling apart and it is a shame that the city or the park service doesn’t buy it.
Frederick Verbauwhede
Mr. Verbauwhede was born in 1850 in Wareghem, Flanders, Belgium. His family, wife Nathalie and three kids came to Skagway in 1898 from Portland Oregon. His store which sold candy and cigars is still standing on Broadway and is owned by the National Park Service which leases it to Klondike Tours.
The photo above is of the other two cribs which he owned around the corner in “French Alley” between 2nd and 3rd off Broadway. The young lady pictured is not related to the family, she was a tenant.
Frederick and family stayed here until 1904 when they decided to go back to Europe and landed in Roubaix, France. His grandson, also named Frederick Verbauwhede still runs a casino in Normandie.
Frederick Verbauwhede died on this day, November 12, 1933 in Roubaix, France, he was 83.
1900 census;1902 directory;family chronicles Gold Rush participants website; descendant in France.
Samuel Haughton Graves
Mr. Graves was born in 1852 in Chicago, Illinois. He came to Skagway as the President of White Pass in 1898. He drove the ceremonial golden spike which finished the railroad line from Skagway to Whitehorse. This happened at Carcross on July 29, 1900.
So much has been written of him and his work supervising the 35,000 workers who built the railroad that I would not know where to begin.
Seen above is the administration building that once housed the offices of the White Pass President and staff. Today it is the administration building of the National Park Service. Graves’ office is the corner office overlooking the station and the harbor and is now the park’s Superintendent’s office. The office next to that was the railroad’s chief of operations but is now the park’s chief of administration (my husband, Reed). Some winter evenings when I go over to meet him for our walk home, the office is quiet and yet the ghosts of those great men linger on, I can almost smell the cigar smoke…
Graves died on this day, November 11, 1911 of a heart attack in Ottawa but is buried in the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
On the White Pass Payroll by Graves, 1908, Chicago; Minter
The story of McCabe College
Harry G. Ask
Harry was born in Washington the youngest son to Charles and Joanna Ask who were from Norway and had lived in Minnesota and Washington. Charles and Joanna came to Skagway in the gold rush about 1898 and stayed for many years running a mercantile and grocery store: “Ask and sons General Merchandise”. The store was still running in the 1930’s.
Harry was born on this day, May 8, 1894 and was only 4 when he came to Skagway with his family.
I have seen his name on one of the little plaques under the Mountain Ash trees that were planted along Broadway several years ago. How those little trees survive is a mystery to me, but then how people survived here for decades is as much a mystery. I believe that the family all moved back to Washington in the 1930’s.
The photo above is from Broadway looking south at the harbor. The trees on the right are the commemorative trees, Harry Ask’s is one of these.
James Wesley Young
Mr. Young was an integral part of the Skagway community at the turn of the century. He was born on August 15, 1853 to a large family in St. David Parish, Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada. He was assistant to Erastus Corning Hawkins, the White Pass Chief Engineer.
Young was also the proprietor of the 5th Avenue Hotel by 1904 (see above photo) and the chief agent for the Great Northern Railroad in Washington.
Young died on this day, March 26, 1905 of pneumonia in Dawson, Yukon. His wife, Emma had died 3 days earlier in Dawson. They left behind a daughter, Edna.
family chronicles; photo of 5th Ave hotel on p.58 of “Skagway District of Alaska, building the Gateway to the Klondike” by Spude, NPS; Minter; Hunt; Pennington; genealogy.com
John Cleveland Kirmse
Jack Kirmse, son of Herman Kirmse, born in Skagway in 1906 died on this day, February 10, 1993 in Carlsbad, California, he was 87 years old.
Herman and his first wife Ida Shonknioler moved to Skagway in the gold rush in 1897 and established themselves as jewelers. Ida died of convulsions in 1900 and so Herman married Hazel Cleveland here in Skagway.
Jack and his wife Georgette lived in Skagway for many years. They owned the Moore House on 5th Avenue which had been in the family since 1907 when Ben Moore sold it to Herman. In 1977 Jack sold the house to the National Park Service and it was restored with antique furnishings. The house is open to the public in the summer to view.
Each year the Skagway school awards the “Jack Kirmse Scholarship” to a graduating senior, and in 2003, Arlen McCluskey (see January 20, 2010 blog) was awarded this scholarship which helped him pursue his educational goals.
This coming summer the Kirmse’s shop on the corner of 5th and Broadway will again be open for business by local residents Cara Cosgrove and Bruce Weber who will sell unique Alaskan crafts and jewelery made by local artisans. The totem poles on the south side of the shop and the clock face on the mountainside are popular for tourists to photograph.
In the picture above you can see both the shop sign and the sign painted on the rocks above town advertising Kirmse’s. The clock face on the clock shows the time of 7:20 which some have said is the time of Lincoln’s death, but actually it has another meaning: in the U.S. clockmakers will set the face of the clocks they are showing in the shop to 7:20 to show the symmetry of the clock face. A Swiss jeweler told me that in Europe they set their clocks to 10:10, the difference being that it makes a smile instead of a sad mouth – a “sourir” I think she said.
Bank Robbery!
On this day, September 16, 1902 an unknown man, about 37 years old walked into the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Skagway with a bomb demanding cash. Unfortunately for him, he fumbled the bomb, it went off and blew him and much of the bank up. His bones and skull led an interesting afterlife, first stored in the backroom and then the skull was put on display in Toronto at a bank there, perhaps as a warning to would be bank robbers. The fate of the skull seems to be somewhat obscure, although the bones were burned in a woodstove by the bank personnel some years later. One man, Mr. de Gex had removed a thumb and kept it in a jar of alcohol and would produce it for view for 50 cents to buy himself a quarter shot of whiskey.