The history of the Klondike, with its harrowing narratives of climbing the Chilkoot and White passes, braving the rapids of the Yukon River and striking it rich only to go broke again, has become legend. Yet there are still more untold stories that linger in the boarded-up ghost towns, forgotten wilderness cabins and along overgrown trails. Yukon historian Michael Gates has made a career of poking around both the archives and the outdoors of the North.

Used as a trading route by the Chilkat Tlingit for centuries, the Dalton Trail was taken over by Jack Dalton, a hard driving, murdering, entrepreneurial adventurer, who built bridges and way stations and set up a toll booth. For a fee he would pack passengers and freight to and from Dawson, gaining a reputation for a difficult but safe passage.

This is the trail where starry-eyed financiers first dreamed of building a railroad to Dawson City, where thousands of head of cattle were regularly driven north--with only some reaching their destination--and where reindeer were unsuccessfully introduced to the Yukon as pack animals. Despite its short existence--from 1897 to 1903, when it was superceded by the relative ease of the Chilkoot and White trails--the Dalton Trail was also a flashpoint for conflict with the local Natives, border disputes between Canada and the US, and the jumping-off point for yet another gold strike at Porcupine Creek.

While the Klondike stories are (nearly) all true, just remember--it happened first on the Dalton.

Michael Gates is the author of From the Klondike to Berlin (Harbour Publishing, 2017) which was shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Fred Kerner Book Award. He is also the author of Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives (Harbour Publishing, 2012) and History Hunting in the Yukon (Harbour Publishing, 2010). He was formerly the curator of collections for Klondike National Historic Sites in Dawson City and pens the popular column “History Hunter” for the Yukon News. He lives in Whitehorse, YT.

Michael Gates' profile page

Dalton's Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives

This well-researched book recounts Jack Dalton’s story as an explorer, outdoorsman, pathfinder and promoter/ entrepreneur who with a partner, Edward Glave, explored the use of a millennia-old Aboriginal trail as a means of getting men, goods and cattle into the fields of the 1890s Klondike gold rush. The ten historical narrative chapters covering Dalton’s story from 1890-1902 are interspersed with the author’s “Interludes.” In these, Michael Gates, an archaeologist, describes his fascination with the idea of locating the original trail, details and realia that he discovers in his times of searching, and finding out more, stories about Dalton and the trail’s exploitation and control by him in the 1890s.

The Uchuck Years: A West Coast Shipping Saga

The Uchuck Years is both a personal biography and a study in the development of a west coast shipping company that combine to illuminate an important portion of BC’s maritime history.

The Barkley Sound Transportation Company transported freight and passengers from Port Alberni to Ucluelet and Bamfield and later became the Nootka Sound Service supplying Tahsis, Zeballos, Kyuquot, Friendly Cove and Esperanza. The story of the MV Uchuck III serving remote logging and mining camps, and on occasion, assisting with rescue and emergency support, conveys a passing lifestyle.

Company records, handwritten captains’ journals, a family scrapbook and the author’s eyewitness recollections source an entertaining and adventurous piece of true life transportation history.

Dalton's Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives

This well-researched book recounts Jack Dalton’s story as an explorer, outdoorsman, pathfinder and promoter/ entrepreneur who with a partner, Edward Glave, explored the use of a millennia-old Aboriginal trail as a means of getting men, goods and cattle into the fields of the 1890s Klondike gold rush. The ten historical narrative chapters covering Dalton’s story from 1890-1902 are interspersed with the author’s “Interludes.” In these, Michael Gates, an archaeologist, describes his fascination with the idea of locating the original trail, details and realia that he discovers in his times of searching, and finding out more, stories about Dalton and the trail’s exploitation and control by him in the 1890s.