Alaskan Roadhouses – 1890s

Arthur Dallimore journeyed from England in the early 1890s to settle in New Zealand. When he heard about the gold rush in Alaska’s Klondike, he jumped onto a boat in 1898 and sailed for the Northern frontiers where gold fever gobbled adventurers from around the globe.

Anne Verdonk, Arthur’s great grandaughter, was given a small mysterious leather suitcase when her grandmother died. It contained the journals of Arthur Dallimore’s Alaskan activities. He was a good writer, and had acquired along the way, a camera, so the journals provide an extraordinarily good record of his experiences and of the times. When Anne read his journals, she was astounded by what he had achieved.

From Skagway in south-east Alaska, he climbed over White Pass to float down the Yukon River to Klondike, close to the Canadian border, a trip of 600 miles. Arthur moved with the gold rush from place to place, eventually settling in Fairbanks in Northern Alaska.

The terrain over which gold fever drew diggers eager for riches was wild, unpopulated, and dangerous, particularly in winter when temperatures could drop -50. To get around this problem, entrepreneurs built roadhouses as stopping places for travellers into the interior. Roadhouses were essentially one-roomed log cabins and they were generally built at great distance from townships and might take weeks by dog sled or months on foot, to reach, but they were an important lifeline for gold hunters.

Arthur Dallimore built and operated two roadhouses, charging a small fortune to use them. The military later established a postal trail from the Bering Sea into the interior, and also made use of the roadhouses. Arthur’s journals detail his experiences at the roadhouses and describe the people coming through; including those whose faces had frozen or who had lost their hands or fingers to the freezing conditions.

Anne, 46, has retraced some of Arthur’s Alaskan trails, making three trips to locate the roadhouses. In 2010 she decided to learn to drive a dog team and mush the trail. With six other dog teams, and her own of six Alaskan Huskies, and one driven by a University of Alaska history professor, who was enthralled by the journals, she mushed from Fairbanks, west along 200 kilometres of Arthur’s trail. Dog food constituted half the load.

She said much of the trail had to be rebroken because it hadn’t been used for many years. They located the roadhouse sites though neither of them are standing any longer. The sites are still obvious from the collapsed remains of the buildings.

Anne mushed in March just as spring was beginning to show and daytime temperatures reach -10. Temperatures dropped at night to -25. The mushers stopped at night to sleep in small arctic tents, each one equipped with a lightweight pot-belly stove kept going all night. The stoves, with telescopic flues, are made from sheetmetal and burn tinder dry fallen deadwood. Anne, who spends a great deal of her time in northern New Zealand was surprised to discover that the snow itself was also dry and that she could walk about on it in her socks and still have dry feet. She described trees which stand 20-30’ at 200 years old, stunted by the permafrost.

The first 200 kms took five days for the clutch of teams to mush. When they did finish, Anne was beside herself with sorrow at being already at the end and convinced the guide to carry on for another week. He took her up into the Alaska Range through mountain passes, and over rivers for an experience she describes as ‘unforgettable.’

Resource: Theresa Sjoquist interview with Anne Verdonk

Copyright