Stickeen River Journal

Stickeen River Journal is the name of the bi-weekly column I used to write for the Wrangell Sentinel. I will be posting the articles here. These are stores related to the Stikine River. Please stop back and see what's new!

Looking Back...
Cottonwood Island site
of Stickeen City in 1898

"Klondike fever is the raging epidemic in
the middle western states.
It is estimated on an absolutely accurate
basis that at least 25,000 men in Illinois, Wisconsin,
Iowa, Indiana and Michigan are
planning to go to the Yukon this spring. The estimate
is built upon reports that 2,114 have actually
bought tickets and secured their implements and outfits."
--The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 13, 1898

Just past Point Rothsay, the entrance to the mighty Stikine River, lies Cottonwood Island. If this brush-covered island could speak, it would have many tales to tell of its part in the history of the Stikine River and Fort Wrangel, Alaska.

During the 1862 Stikine River gold rush, schooners and sloops landed their passengers either at the Stikine Village on Wrangell Island (to the south of the river’s entrance), or at the mouth of the river on the southern tip of Cottonwood Island. It was much safer to land passengers at either location rather than taking a chance in negotiating the tidal flats with the larger sailing vessels that plied the Inside Passage. It could be treacherous to go further than the mouth of the river in the large ships.

Hundreds of miners waited on Cottonwood Island for the river to freeze up sufficiently to sustain the weight of the men with their gear on their backs or their heavy gear-laden sleds so that they could travel over the ice and beat the hordes traveling by water in the Spring. Camping out on the ice was the alternative to waiting until Spring thaw so that the prospectors could launch their canoes and other water craft and paddle upriver to Glenora or Telegraph Creek—depending on the water level of the river.

The river was a busy transportation corridor during the 1878 Cassiar Gold rush, but the busiest time for the river and Cottonwood Island was probably during those first years of the Klondike Gold Rush during the winter of 1897-98. Approximately 1,000 people camped on the island that first winter waiting for the ice to freeze hard and thick enough to allow them to transport their gear up the river.

To wile away the bleak, cold winter months, the temporary residents began planning a complete city, platting lots, naming the streets and speculating on property values. MacKenzie, Mann & Co., the company chartered by the Canadian government to construct a railway from Telegraph Creek to Teslin Lake in 1897, established a warehouse on Cottonwood Island where they stored their supplies and construction equipment preparatory to transporting everything upriver. They had already surveyed the shores of the river and erected camps along the way where they would cache the supplies and equipment that their crew would transport.

The Klondike, Mining, Trading and Transportation Corporation also utilized the island for their headquarters that winter. They operated the riverboat, LOUISE, on the river during 1898, only making about three trips and then sailed her back to Victoria, British Columbia.

The little river boat GYPSY QUEEN was owned and operated by the Gypsy Queen Gold Mining Co., of West Virginia. She was constructed on Cottonwood Island in 1898 for the sole use of the company in their mining exploration. And then there were restaurants and trading posts that added to the facade of a real city upon the island.

With the coming of Springtime, Stickeen City was quickly forgotten as the miners—men and women alike—left for the gold fields using the Stikine River as their trail to the North. The ever-changing channel of the river and the annual flooding as the snow melts in the mountains and the Spring rains wash down to the river has left nothing to provide proof of the existence of Stickeen City. Only brief newspaper accounts, personal accounts from diaries and government documents provide a brief glimpse of what occurred there 100 years ago.