American frontiersman John "Jack" Dalton was his own person and liked to solve his problems on the spot, which may account for his controversial reputation as an historical dichotomy.

Another reason is that losers and lazy louts, of which early Alaska was replete, were jealous of others' successes, of which Dalton had many to his credit.

One legacy was the route of the present-day Haines Highway, built in 1943 as a 160-mile wartime access road from tidewater to connect with the American Army's Alaska Highway at Mile 1016 at Haines Junction, Yukon.

The road closely hugs the original gold-rush trail Dalton ingeniously developed for pack trains and cattle drives in the 1890s.

He also introduced packhorses to the Yukon.

While one faction jeered Dalton for his attitudes and taking the law into his own hands, an opposing group cheered until he was the vaunted first citizen of Alaska.

The people who mattered viewed him as a visionary. He was known for courage, accomplishments, perseverance, integrity and boundless energy. He was even known for an honest, generous streak and sometimes paid bills for out-of-heel people.

In Haines Mission, Juneau and Dawson City circles he was highly-esteemed, mostly for delivering fresh meat to people's tables.

He was literate and he was smart, an industrious man of entrepreneurial spirit whose many talents were a magnet to backers and bankers.

The only way to accomplish anything in the unharnessed north country was to do things yourself or get left behind. Getting left behind wasn't in Jack Dalton's psyche. His thoughts raced fast-forward, his actions were quick and decisive.

Events changed in rapid-fire succession in the north. His popular stage line of one minute could suddenly be supplanted with a train, and he would be the one blazing the best route for a rail bed, which was his unfulfilled dream for the Dalton Trail.

His short, snappy gait portrayed a man who always knew where he was going, although his enemies viewed his quick movements as threatening.

He had a kind, easy-going disposition until his flashpoint was lit. The amused glint in his eye could flare into uncontrollable anger. He did not suffer fools lightly, and anybody foolish enough to tangle with him was flirting with imminent danger.

He once beat a saloon-keeper for establishing a bar on his trail to ply Indians with booze; he flattened a government agent with one powerful blow to the jaw for refusing to pay workers; and he fatally shot another man for trying to incite the Indians to take up arms against him and to resist Dalton as a trader of goods.

History hints at, but can't confirm, that he may have been forced to runaway from his Oklahoma home for shooting a man when he was 15 years old, perhaps in self-defense.

Another story cropped up that he had to leave Oregon Territory to escape prosecution and/or lynching for a shooting escapade. An erroneous tale was told that Dalton had worked on a ranch under the assumed name of Miller. Why he would change his name in Oregon Territory than revert to the name Dalton in Alaska makes no sense. A man could run but he couldn't hide from a U.S. Marshal.

The story goes that he had fled Oregon Territory in 1882 after fatally shooting a man. But the urban legend is riddled with an many holes as was the fictitious victim. For starters, there is no such handgun as a Colt Bulldog with which to do the deed. It was nearly four years before Dalton reached Alaska. The rest of the story has to be discounted as one told by a Burns County, Oregon, blowhard who was seeking glory for himself while discrediting Dalton, who, by then, was heralded as a folk hero.

Another story that Dalton went to San Francisco in 1883 and hired on with a sealing vessel that wintered in the miserable climes and conditions at Herschel Island, off the northern tip of the Yukon District, is also dubious.

Dalton has come down through history with a reputation for trouble. The fabled stories may have been garbled with the troubles he encountered in Haines Mission for shooting a man and a Juneau vigilante group threatening to lynch him after a court acquitted him of murder.

He also is sometimes confused with the members of the infamous American desperado gang comprised of leader Robert Dalton (1870-1892) and brothers Emmett and Grattan Dalton. The younger Dalton boys were still in the cradle when Jack Dalton left home about 1870 and was roaming throughout the American West during its most lawless period as a cowboy and a frontiersman.

Dalton was tough, a man cloaked in armadillo hide, a man of steel, a man of will--all the main attributes of an early-day Alaskan.

Jack Dalton grew up in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma Territory during the rowdy expansion years of the American West. The social anarchy was a mass madness of gangsters, gunfighters and unscrupulous lawmen, not to mention a U.S. government in faraway Washington, D.C. Every man had to rely on his own wits. To survive might mean taking the law into his own hands.

Stampeders were rushing westward to grab homestead land and to find gold and silver. Out on the open range, cowboys, soldiers, outlaws, Pony Express riders, stagecoach drivers, U.S. marshals and deputies buckled on six-shooters and slung sheathed rifles from their shoulders or saddles.

Sharpshooter women, alone on the ranch while men were off on 1,000-mile cattle drives or fighting wars, protected herds from predators with their trusty Winchesters. In town, bankers and businessmen concealed derringers inside desk drawers and suit pockets.

Everybody carried guns and knew how and was willing to use them. Guns were merely brainless, soul-less, inanimate objects that were only as good or bad as whoever had control of them. To ranchers and cowboys, guns were essential tools.

Dalton was born about six years before the war that wasn't too civil broke out between the North and South. The battles eventually overflowed into the West and was one of several factors that helped sound the death knell for the Pony Express.

Russell, Major and Waddell, freight and express whizzes, had pressed 500 premiere Morgans and Mustangs into service. The mounts averaged 10 miles an hour; 80 featherweight couriers were on the payroll at any time for $100 a month, about double the wages of the average cow hand.

The oldest rider was a 120-pound, 20-year-old lad; the youngest was a fearless 11-year-old boy weighing less than 100 pounds.

It was a dangerous job. A rider was an easy target for robbers as he streaked alone across the plain with his valuable mail pouches. The Pony Express, lightyears faster than the Overland Stage, speed-delivered mail over the 2,000-mile route in 10 days between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.

The incredible feat can be better appreciated when comparing some of today's air mail delivery time of eight to 10 days to cover a similar distance between Edmonton and Whitehorse.

Pony Express was an exciting service, only the company was not charging high enough rates to cover costs. The service failed within 19 months--not that it could have adequately competed much longer against the new telegraph communication phenomenon.

Had Jack Dalton been five years older and of willowy physique, no doubt "pony express rider" would have been added to his resume. As it was, he would try to re-enact a miniature version of this romantic enterprise 38 years later to deliver mail over his trail to Dawson City, Yukon.

Dalton, whose accepted year of birth is between 1855 and 1859, entered the world under the British spelling "Daulten", interchanged with "Daulton", until newspaper accounts and his own handsome penmanship compressed the "a" and "u" and condensed it into the American version "Dalton", which stuck.

Presumably, Dalton was 15 years old when he ventured beyond the confines of his home in 1870. By then, the Cherokee Strip land had entered statehood as Kansas in 1861, the year the first Civil War rifles cracked and the Pony Express expired.

The young lad experienced many parts of the West, honing his skills on ranches, range and cattle drives. Long before he found his way to Alaska in 1886, he was an expert horseman, cattleman, gunman, and, most importantly, an exquisite camp book.

Sometimes he hung around San Francisco, the hub for fur traders, livestock dealers and merchants who owned fleets of steamships engaged in whaling, sealing, and trading in Alaska. This fact may be where the erroneous story materialized that he abandoned the wide open spaces for low wages and maggot-infested food for a year's voyage on a stinking whaling vessel.

The astute, shrewd partners and directors controlling the boards of such companies as Alaska Commercial Company and Goodall, Perkins & Company were politically well-connected in Washington, D.C. His contacts would be useful later for his Alaska-Yukon cattle drives and road-building enterprises.

The furs and gold that company agents bought and bartered from the Indians and prospectors were shipped south from the coast of Alaska at St. Michael's to California in rusty, stinking, ocean-going freighters. Foodstuffs and wares of all descriptions were backhauled to their field agents who operated trading posts, strategically located in the Yukon River basin of Alaska and the British Yukon District, then an appendage of Canada's Northwest Territories.

When the West settled down, it became too civilized for a motley breed of restless frontiersmen, adventurers, vagabonds, wanderers, prospectors, gold diggers, explorers, exploiters, Civil War veterans, Indian fighters, whiskey traders, con artists, outlaws, loners and social misfits.

They forged northward into the wide-open spaces of distant Alaska, a huge piece of raw, inhospitable geography the United States purchased from Russian in 1867.

Faced with earning a living in the wilds, the migrants packed their affordable, reliable, pearl-handled Colt six-shooters and prized Winchester repeater rifles and ventured off.

Once again, independent men had to survive on their own wits, sometimes having to take the law into their own hands. These Alaskan pioneers had nothing for back up except guns and their fellow man.

Other than the Magna Carta, Ten Commandments, Christian values and a good dose of common sense, no laws governed the rambunctious Alaska.

There was little if any budget for a U.S. marshal, much less deputies. Rough justice was dispensed with a majority vote at miners' meetings which weren't abolished in interior Alaska until the semblance of law enforcement and a court system teetered into existence after 1900.

Meanwhile, Alaska looked toward Oregon laws as a guide around 1884 to fill the gap. There simply wasn't any money to set up court systems in the expansive land, so what little formal justice was administered was mostly done from accessible places along the coast.

Every federal appointment was made by the U.S. president and served at his behest. The appointees were recommendations to the president from politically-connected cronies.

Due to a sparse population, citizens were doing double duty which often translated into conflict of interest. One governor served a full term before anyone realized he wasn't an American citizen. Many of the judges, prosecutors, marshals and other political appointees who paraded through the revolving door were a despicable string of crooks, thieves and vermin. It look a lot of weaning for Alaska to shed its frontier mentality and come of age.

The huge land mass of Alaska--one-fifth the size of the whole continental United States--is shaped like a gigantic saucepan. The strip of southeastern Alaska running along the coast that abuts British Columbia looks undeniably like the pan's handle. The Panhandle that hosted Sitka, Juneau, Dyea, Haines Mission and Pyramid Harbor is where Jack Dalton made his debut to Alaska in 1886.

He had signed on as camp cook and labourer with Lt. Frederick Schwatka who was leading a New York Times scientific expedition up the prominent 18,000-foot Mount St. Elias, easily visible from the Gulf of Alaska. Only one team member had alpine experience, and the attempt to scale North America's third highest peak failed in less than two weeks.

Dalton was hooked. He relished exploration along the coast and latched onto every chance to join any of the many scientific parties exploring the coastline. In between gigs, he settled into the booming mining camp of Juneau, where $20.67 an ounce gold had been discovered in 1880.

There, Dalton engaged in a little prospecting, a little mining, a little fishing and was operating a small trading vessel.

A Fateful Meeting With Edward Glave Altered Dalton's Future

Dalton's reputation preceded him. Known as an excellent trailmate and for his acumen as an exceptional cook, scout and woodsman, he was the perfect choice to undertake a daring wilderness adventure that was destined to significantly impact his career and Alaska-Yukon history.

Dalton and Edward James Glave met in 1890. They were about the same age range but from different ends of the social spectrum. The 28-year-old, English-born Glave was an interesting combination of explorer, artist and journalist who had gone on a six-year stint to the Congo River about 1884. He served as an associate under famous explorer Dr. Henry Stanley. New York reporter Alfred Schanz was there, too, and would accompany the Alaska-Yukon safari.

It was Glave's popular North American lecture tour of 1889 that led to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of New York acquiring sponsorship funds for an expedition to explore interior Alaska and record the headwaters and tributaries of the Yukon, Copper, Alsek and Chilkat rivers.

It was right up Glave's alley. He eagerly accepted the invitation to join the six-man Exploring Expedition as an executive officer. He was enthused about going into unknown country to write about his journey and pen in the blank spots on incomplete maps with deserving geographical features.

In contrast to his background was his compatible 35-year-old roughneck companion.

Glave was in a better position than any other scribe to boast about Dalton's character, patience, good humour and unflinching nerve to face perilous circumstances. After two field seasons, Glave immortalized Dalton's virtues in print.

"He was a most desirable partner, having excellent judgment, cool and deliberate in time of danger, and possessed great tact in dealing with the Indians," Glave praised. "He thoroughly understood horses, was as good as any Indian in a cottonwood dugout or skin canoe, and as a camp cook I never met his equal."

Dalton wasn't a big man. But he appeared taller than he was because he exuded with confidence. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his muscular five-foot, six or eight-inch frame. Glave humorously portrayed Dalton's impressive Herculean strength as the two-party contingent set out on their first mission in 1890:

"...Dalton and I decided to stay to see the last of the caravan and pick up any odds and ends that might be left behind; we found plenty of this material with which we brought up the rear of the procession, loaded with a curious assortment of property.

"Dalton carried three pairs of snowshoes, one gold pan, one bread pan, four saucepans (all about the same size strung from our waist on a belt), besides which he had a rifle, revolver, ammunition, etc. I was loaded with one bucket, one big kettle, teapot, blankets, sack of books, camera, overcoat and a wild duck.

"We had pots and pans, whose musical melodies might have aptly served as the heralding strains of the Salvation Army; but the climax of our eccentric march was reached when Dalton packed me and my load on his back across a stream. How glad I was that no camera fiend was nigh to have taken that perambulatory mass of grotesquely smothered humanity!"

The other party members consisted of leader E. Hazard Wells and the New York journalist Alfred Schanz. They and their partners split off at Kusawa Lake country in the British Yukon District to investigate Tanana country in the Upper Yukon River basin in Alaska.

Glave and Dalton turned attention towards the Alsek-Tatshenshini River system, in hopes the waterway would take them back to the Pacific Ocean. It did.

Glave and Dalton had come upon a village at the end of Klukshu Lake. From there, they followed a trail roughly 35 miles and came upon another settlement. The headquarters of the Stick Indians, who were all downriver 60 miles at their fishing camp, was composed of a dozen large and small houses, each accommodating several families. About 120 people lived in the village of Neska-Ta-Heen.

Up to this point, river travel had not been possible and the two men stuck to the trail. Now, though the river was wild, its volume had increased considerably and Glave reported seeing occasional dugout canoes.

This sighting sparked the idea that any means of travel trumped walking with heavy packs and gear dangling from their belts. They had to do some clever bargaining and pay what Glave said to be "an exorbitant sum" to secure a canoe and services of a medicine man. Shank proved himself an excellent river man. Assuming they valued their hides, he was worth whatever price they had to pay.

Shank knew the river and gleefully recounted a litany of accidents "over here" and drownings "over there" that had occurred in the raging, dangerous white water as their sturdy canoe plunged, dunked, bobbed and swirled down the Tatshenshini-Alsek to the river's mouth. They were spit out at Dry Bay and walked up the beach some five miles to the nearest trading post on Yakutat Bay, located northwest of Haines Mission.

Coming out with sore backs and shoulders, the men were convinced that packhorses would be a practical solution for moving about the country.

They also recognized the potential of establishing their own trade with the Indians and their own personal transportation route to service the increasing mining population.

The Chilkats--a distinct Tlingit "kwon" or tribe from the Chilkoots--had for generations held a rigid stranglehold over the Chilkat, Chilkoot and White passes. These three main corridors led to the interior where trade was carried out with the Stick Indians, thus named because they lived in the woods.

Coastal Indians came mainly with blankets, guns, powder, tobacco and smelt oil, thus dubbing the routes as "grease trails". Their return trips to the coast consisted of 100-pound packs laden with a variety of furs and lumps and nuggets of copper.

Traders and prospectors were aware of the hostility existing between the two tribes. The Chilkats prevented passage of white men coming en masse into their country, for fear of infringing their rights as middlemen between the coastal Indians and the Tlingits and Sticks living across the mountains.

The Indians had nothing but their feet for moving around the country. In turn, the sole reason for the undeveloped and underexplored state of the land was blamed on defective transportation.

"The Indian carrier was the only means of transportation; he controlled the situation, and commanded most exorbitant pay," declared Glave, who was devising a scheme to advance transportation. "Moreover, his arrogance, inconsistency, cunning and general unreliability are ever on the alert to thwart the white man."

White men had been dribbling in over the trails since sometime between 1875 and 1878. George Holt, a gutsy prospector, said to be an Ohio-born Quaker, was credited as the first white man allowed to come into the Yukon over the Chilkoot Pass from trailhead at Dyea Inlet. To accomplish his feat meant defying a sentinel of 3,000 fierce Chilkats who guarded their turf with jealous zeal.

How Holt managed to run the tribe's gauntlet, scale the pass, penetrate the unknown land, wander around a while, retrace his route to egress through the same formidable gap he had entered, is a mystery.

He displayed two small nuggets, which may have been purchased from an Alaskan Indian at Tanana, spun a few yarns, and enticed a score of bold adventurers at Sitka to try the Chilkoot route, too.

Dr. George Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada wrote in his 1887 report that George Holt was accompanied by two or more Indians, which is similar to what the Sitka-based weekly newspaper contended on October 2, 1897.

The Alaskan said Holt went through Chilkoot Pass in May, 1874, accompanied by an Indian guide and two packer slaves assigned by the chief of the Chilkats, the authoritarian tribe holding the interior Tlingits and Sticks in bondage.

Holt, an Alaska Commercial Company agent, was killed in 1885 by a Copper River Indian at Kenai, Alaska. Too few whites lived in the country to attempt punishing Indians for these rare violent acts. Indian tribes for the most part were friendly. Any resistance to the white men's intrusion was an isolated occurrence perpetrate by an Indian acting on his own.

The Sitka newspaper added to the Holt story. Seemingly, Levi Harrod of Ohio set out to confirm if Holt's claims were true. Harrod allegedly had a chat with the Chilkat chief and was given company of one of Holt's slave packers to scale the Chilkoot Pass in May, 1876. It is not known if Harrod returned with any gold specimens.

Author Pierre Berton described the Chilkats as men of immense cunning and avarice--squat, sturdy, heavy-shouldered and able to lug a 200-pound pack across the mountains without rest, he wrote in his book Klondike.

"They were a crude, cruel race with Mongolian features and drooping Fu Manchu moustaches, who existed on a diet of dried salmon, a pungent concoction that one explorer described as tasting like a cross between Limburger cheese and walrus hide."

Holt's enigmatic trek to the interior had sparked a promise of gold within restless vagabonds who were forever curious what lay on the other side of the Coast Mountains.

Edmond Bean had come from California to Sitka, the capital of the Panhandle, in the late 1870s. He and others pestered the American government to protect their safe passage into the uncharted territory of the Yukon basin.

American naval officer, Captain Lester Beardslee, stationed at Sitka as acting governor of Alaska, took advantage of yet another conflict raging among the Tlingit factions over molasses, a coveted ingredient for distilling hootch that caused no end of trouble among the tribes.

On October 3, 1879, he sent a contingent of trusted Chilkat intermediaries living in Sitka to visit their warring brethren.

A deal was struck. Beardslee would send over a number of duly-deputized Chilkat policemen to restore order and to implement any other support necessary to keep the peace in northern Tlingit territory in exchange for the safe passage of miners over the Chilkoot Pass.

Beardslee agreed to Chief Klotz-Kuch's demand that the miners would behave as orderly, sober, reasonable gentlemen and that they would not carry "spirituous liquor into the Indian country for purposes of trade or barter with the natives."

The chief then extended the prospectors a welcome and formal invitation to scale the Chilkoot. Both sides better be good for their gentlemen's agreement or there would be hell to pay.

A party of 19 pilgrims, led by Bean, had signed good-behaviour documents and was ready to leave Dyea Inlet on May 11, 1880. Along the way, another six adventurers joined the party. As promised, the 25 men were permitted without hindrance to make their pioneer crossing of the Chilkoot.

The skookum, clever Indians were the winners. They charged hefty fees to pack the newcomers' heavy outfits to the Yukon River's headwaters.

Although the Chilkats had loosened their grip, allowing white men to enter their sanctum without contest, they still held a firm trade monopoly.

The Chilkoot Pass, the shorter of the routes, was much too steep for Glave and Dalton to consider packhorses. Their sights were focused on exploring the Chilkat route, albeit a longer route to the interior. But its gradual grade, low-lying ground and grassy meadows were attractive features for developing a trail for wagons and livestock.

Glave, the expedition boss, wanted to keep the second expedition simple to avoid alarm. He selected Dalton as his sole white companion, which speaks volumes about Dalton's character and aptitude; two Chilkat guides and an interpreter were hired as far as Neska-Ta-Heen for $2.00 a day, plus board.

The two explorers had been to Seattle and bought four short, chunky horses, weighing about 900 pounds each. They outfitted with pack saddles, harnesses, ample provisions and ammunition. Then they sailed north through the thousand miles of the Inland Passage. Near Haines Mission was Pyramid Harbor, deemed the best point for starting inland with horses.

First Packhorses Came Snorting into Yukon on Snowshoes

"No horses had ever been taken into the country, and old miners, traders and prospectors openly pitied our ignorance in imagining the possibility of taking pack animals over the Coast Range," proclaimed Glave.

"The Indians ridiculed the idea of such an experiment; they told us of deep, swift streams flowing across our path, the rocky paths so steep that the Indian hunter could climb in safety only by creeping on his hands and knees.

"Finding that their discouraging reports failed to influence us, the Chilkat Indians, foreseeing that our venture, if successful, would greatly injure their interests by establishing a dangerous competition against their present monopoly, held meetings on the subject.

"(R)umour reached us that our further advance would be resisted. However, when we were ready, we saddled up, buckled on our pistol-belts, and proceeded on our journey without any attempt to hindrance save by verbal demonstration."

Their second trip of May, 1891, was primarily to check out the feasibility of going over the trail with livestock. Dalton adored his horses and they would do anything for him, regardless of how ridiculous. The packhorses were strapped into snowshoes before starting the gradual climb to the 4,750-foot Chilkat summit.

Glave's articles, which he dispatched to the coast with Indian foot couriers to connect with mail-carrying boats, summarized a delightful experiment conducted with the adaptable pioneer packhorse in Century Magazine.

"Fearing that we might have a lot of soft snow to cross on the summit, we constructed sets of four snow-shoes for our horses," he enthused.

"The horse's hoof was placed in a pad in the center of the shoe, and a series of loops drawn up and laced round the fetlock kept it in place. When first experimenting with these, a horse would snort and tremble upon lifting his feet. Then he would make the most vigourous efforts to shake them off.

"Standing on his hind legs, he would savagely paw the air, then quickly tumble onto his forelegs and kick frantically. We gave them daily instruction in this novel accomplishment till each horse was an expert."

The handlers grinned at these admirable four-legged troopers.

After four days' travel, they reached a bluff overlooking Neska-Ta-Heen, a village of some 120 black-haired, dusky-skinned people, wearing greasy buckskins and warm smiles.

The ancient village surely existed long before the first documentation of 1852, for it was the most important rendezvous place for the natives. During the winter, the interior natives hunted and trapped in small parties, returning to the village with their fur harvest. The Chilkats came to the village from the coast with products for exchange. But the Chilkats tenaciously prevented the interior natives from venturing to the coast for trading purposes.

The party had announced its presence to the friendly villagers by firing several "hello, this camp" rifle shots. Their arrival created quite a stir. Some inhabitants had never seen pale-skinned men or the likes of Dalton's flowing, blond moustache and thought both men must be sick with a strange disease.

Neither had the Indians witnessed, much less coined a word in their language to define such large, snorting, hornless creatures. From lack of a better term, they called the horses "harklane ketl", or big dogs.

It was a place of plenty, and the villagers ate well. The rivers teemed with salmon and the land was bountiful with berries and wild beasts. The white men were welcomed good-naturedly. The old chief Warsaine portioned off a corner of his hut for them, and the chief's wife even consented to be photographed.

The white men, who concluded they could take a fully-loaded pack-train from the coast to Neska-Ta-Heen in seven days, wanted to plunge deeper inland with reliable guides.

Their disgruntled Chilkat pals, whose value was dubious, anyway, were not able to dissuade the white men from their vigourous mode of travel, so turned back to their coastal home.

"The Chilkats followed the most difficult trails, hoping that the horses would be a failure, and they sought out the longest possible routes, hoping to prolong the journey because of the ($2) per diem basis of their pay," groused Glave.

Yet it was a momentous occasion that changed the course of history. "Our successful experiment wrests from the Chilkat Indians the control of the road to the interior; the bolted gate hitherto guarded by them, to the exclusion of enterprise and progress, has swung back at the approach of the pack horses."

The white men couldn't convince any of the Neska-Ta-Heen villagers to guide them into the White River country. They blanched in fear at the mere thought of the regional warlike Indians. In the distant past, the White River people had surprise attacked the peaceful Neska-Ta-Heen people and kindled an irreconcilable rift.

The white men were on their own in strange country. Along the way, they fortuitously met several groups of Indians who were curious about the horses and guided them short distance before their paths forked. One small group, going sheep hunting in Kluane country, agreed to guide them over a segment of the trail in exchange for the treat of four-legged critters carrying their heavy packs.

The Indians departed at Kluane Lake where the explorers found a leaky dugout canoe. They made the mistake of going for a paddle on the glassy calm water.

The capricious lake has a nasty characteristic of whipping up unexpectedly into a tempest of white caps. Baling did no good. They had to jump overboard into astonishingly-high waves and numbingly-cold water, overturn the craft, and cling to it.

Miraculously, they managed to push the boat toward shore and salvage a water-sealed bag with blankets, notebooks and camera. But they lost irreplaceable items like Dalton's watch and chain, compass and sextant, as well as rifles, ammo, cooking utensils, gold pans and miners' picks. Luckily, the greatest part of their gear had been left with the hobbled horses, who surely would have perished had their owners drowned.

Soon, winter was nigh. It was time to leave the country that was indelibly etched in both men's minds. They headed for the coast, exiting over the same route as that of their inward journey, riding the congenial pioneer horses except when encountering three snow storms and four-foot deep drifts in Chilkat Pass.

Glave must have tired of noisy grinding glaciers and endless dramatic scenery. Curiously, after spearheading the packhorse expedition, he immediately left the north as soon as they returned to the coast.

He was drawn back to his investigative work in Africa, where he was either killed by the poisonous darts of restless natives or contracted a suspicious tropical bug through natural means. He died suddenly at age 32 in the Belgian Congo on May 12, 1895.

It is not known if Glave and Dalton corresponded about the project's progress as Dalton began in earnest to improve the primitive hard-packed trail into the highest standards of the day.

Molasses and Murder

Dalton was inconvenienced by a few major interruptions as some very unfortunate incidents transpired.

Conflicts raged incessantly among the Tlingit factions over molasses and distilling the ingredient into vile-tasting hoochinoo. Indians were prohibited from drinking liquor and the whites were prohibited from selling it to them.

"In this atmosphere of permissiveness for the whites and creoles, and repression for the Indians, some unknown opportunist taught the Tlingits the technique of distilling liquor from molasses and sugar," explained Allen Wright in his book Prelude to Bonanza.

"None of the tribes adopted this art more eagerly than did the Hootchinoo of Admiralty Island (near Juneau). Eventually, the name 'hooch', applied to the product of all the stills, entered the language, immortalizing in a modest way the misdirected enthusiasm of these people."

The problem was inherent in 1880 when Chief Klotz-Kuch welcomed the first white men over the Chilkoot on the proviso they wouldn't take spirituous liquor into Indian country for the purposes of trade or barter with the natives.

And Captain Beardslee had sent deputized Tlingits from Sitka to keep the peace in Chilkat country where conflict was rooted in distilled drink.

When tragedy struck at the Pyramid Harbor Packing Company salmon cannery one July day in 1892, the U.S. government was blamed for neglecting Indian affairs and lifting the ban on the sale of breech-loading rifles to the natives.

Two Indians, acting independently, felt a real or imagined dislike for the whites' exploiting what they considered to be their land and their fish. The attitude and courage of the pair was stoked on Canadian-supplied alcohol. In a drunken stupor, they killed one white man and wounded another.

The authorities appealed to Dalton. He pinned on a deputy's badge, buckled on his sidearm, picked up his rifle and waded into the bloody mess free-of-charge.

He and U.S. deputy marshal Endelman arrested Tom and Qualth. With backup from the U.S. Navy gunboat Pinta, they delivered the prisoners to Sitka to be charged and tried in a white man's court. In 1885, Congress had passed a law making all Indians answerable to the criminal laws of the United States.

Dalton, a sober man without a thirst for liquor, did not provide alcohol to the Indians and he didn't want anybody supplying it, either, especially not on his property. Duly-deputized, he was seething the day he stormed across the British Columbia line to tie up loose ends of the Pyramid Harbor shootings. The culprit he sought was in the midst of setting up a saloon to sell whiskey to the Indians until he had an attitude adjustment. Dalton beat the pulp out of him.

Dalton had further cinched his reputation as a tough hombre, not to tangle with. But some people don't learn from others' mistakes. Out of earshot, rumours rippled. His enemies were opposed to deputizing this cocky bastard who already acted like he was the law.

While Dalton didn't utter idle threats, neither was he in the habit of shooting people, otherwise he would have put a hole in the saloon-keeper rather than wasting his energy.

Nevertheless, Dalton's revolver was always at the ready. He wore it attached to his belt and holstered in a conventional position, high under his right arm to keep it out of his way when working. The six-shooter was not holstered backwards for fast draw nor worn strapped on his thigh or tucked in his belt like the trademark of gunslingers or gunfighters, as he was often miscast. As noted in Glave's writings, their revolvers were tools, like a compass, sextant, gold pan, Swede saw and an axe.

About eight months after the affray at Pyramid Harbor, Dalton was plenty sore again. He was getting wind of a nervousness whipping up the Indians. They were starting to favour the stories that Dalton intended to be the trade king along the trail and would leave the Indians destitute and a hostage to his mercy.

He traced the source to a young troublemaker named McGinnis who made the grave faux pas of interfering in Dalton's business.

What was McGinnis' motive? Did he see something he thought the Indians didn't and was urging them to take up arms that was a constant threat to Dalton's life? Or was McGinnis a pathetic greenhorn seeking glory by playing big shot?

In an incident suspicioned to bear connections with the shooting at Pyramid Harbor, Dalton had heard about McGinnis bad-mouthing him in an effort to turn the Chilkats against him with whispers about his trading intentions being dishonourable.

Some accounts cite the victim of Dalton's wrath as a brawler working for the Pyramid Cannery across the Chilkat River from the small Indian village of only 13 whites. Another reference described Daniel McGinnis as a "puny, 120-pound soaking-wet" cannery store clerk at Chilkat village.

Whichever, size didn't count if the man had a great equalizer in his mitts. It doesn't compute that a mismatched, defenseless weakling, unaccustomed to fighting, would tangle with a man of Dalton's calibre.

What happened next is fuzzy, at best. It seems Dalton roared into the Chilkat cannery store on March 6, 1893. In a lengthy harangue, that included the company of a single Indian witness-interpreter, he ordered McGinnis to keep his trap shut and stop inciting the Indians, who were Dalton's friends, customers and future.

It wasn't Dalton's style to confront a person with cold-blooded murder in mind, otherwise he would have waived the time-consuming preamble. As the aggressor, he has prone to settling scores through intimidation or with his fists.

Did Dalton shoot McGinnis point blank in self-defense when McGinnis raised an axe or gun in his own defense? Or was Dalton smacking McGinnis upside the head with the butt end when the revolver accidentally discharged a bullet into McGinnis' gut? Only McGinnis or an eye witness would know for sure.

That Dalton didn't flee but was said to have paced the beach long afterwards is indicative he must have been suffering shock and remorse.

After McGinnis died from loss of blood, an inquest was held. Dalton was charged with first-degree murder and taken to Juneau for jury trial.

The newspaper reports were notoriously unreliable. The accused was a pawn in a personal feud raging between the two editors when the rough-hewn territory was replete with political scandals, corruption, fraud, graft and yellow journalism.

The editor of the Sitka-based Alaska hated the editor of the Juneau-based
Alaska Journal. There also was resentment as Sitka lost its edge as the Panhandle's unofficial capital to boomtown Juneau.

The editors fired volleys back and forth across the straits until inflammatory purple prose obfuscated any semblance of coherent facts. Juneau's Alaska Journal championed its favourite folk hero while Sitka's Alaskan vilified a despicable murderer.

One of Dalton's defense counsel was John Maloney, a big, boisterous drinker in his own rights, who was a lawyer for Alaska Treadwell Gold Mining Company and had a lot of investment and business irons in the fire, some with Dalton.

Maloney and his colleague, lawyer Arthur Delaney, later served a term each as Juneau's mayors--Delaney in 1900-01; Maloney from 1905-06.

The lawyers won a non-guilty verdict for their 38-year-old client in June, 1893. Due to a sparse population and citizens doing conflicting duties, the accusation of a jury stacked with high-ranking, sympathetic Treadwell Gold employees is plausible.

Obviously, there is more behind this case than was told; strangely, the dead man faded into oblivion, and the prosecution did not appeal the acquittal.

Why? According to the Sitka newspaper, outraged Juneau residents condemned the jury for a travesty of justice and wanted Dalton hanged. If true, Dalton did not flinch or flee but went overtly about his business.

On July 1, 1893, the Alaskan noted that in a second civic meeting the lynching decision was qualified. It was reported that Dalton would be notified that he had to leave the territory within three days. Failure to do as he was ordered would mean forfeiture of his life with a noose.

This type civic meeting as reported by a blowhard editor was tantamount to rough justice dispensed in interior Alaska where important judicial matters were decided by majority vote in emotional miners' meetings. Death sentences were as commonplace for theft as for murder but normally were commuted to exile from town or camp because nobody could be found to do the ugly deed with the hemp.

Exactly which Juneau vigilante had the nerve to notify Jack Dalton of the decision, much less do the lynch job is unknown. He was well-liked by a legion of people and held influence with powerful figures in high places.

Dalton didn't react like a person facing mob violence, or who took the newspaper articles seriously. It leaves one wondering how much of the story was authentic and how much was fabricated, especially since McGinnis' character, motive and ethnic origin were ignored.

Dalton, who wouldn't flee from the devil himself, went back to Haines Mission where he leased land and a warehouse and started his trading business with the Indians. Simultaneously, he was hiring Indian crews and developing his trail for cattle drives and wagon drayage to the interior.

Nary another peep was heard about the verdict nor the lynching proposal, and Dalton remained firmly implanted on Alaska soil another 26 years. Ironically, his virtues had already been extolled in Alaska and New York publications to which history is indebted to his exploring mate, Edward Glave; articles would appear later in Oregon and Washington newspapers reinforcing Dalton as a legend within his own lifetime.

The Dalton Hotel and Trading Post were opened on Front Street in Haines Mission and arrangements made for holding pens to offload livestock. Goods, coming up the Inside Passage on mercantile ships, were stored in a big warehouse. Distribution of provisions was augmented along the Panhandle and inside rivers with his little Indian-piloted steamer, Chilkat.

Dalton was tactful and forthright dealing with the natives. In turn, they respected him. He employed a number of them in town and on slashing crews.

He was diligently building and planning, running around like the mill tails of hell. About 1892-93, he had constructed a log roadhouse and trading facility called Dalton Cache. It was located about 40 miles up the trail, inside the line where he surmised the international boundary divided Alaska from Canada's province of British Columbia, where he had made mincemeat of the would-be saloon-keeper.

Seemingly, Dalton's defense lawyer gained fame as one of Juneau's richest through his wheeling and dealing and opened Juneau Cold Storage and founded Alaska Light and Power Company. John Maloney was financially backing construction of Dalton's trail and would later buy saddle horses for the mail delivery.

Dalton was much appreciated for orchestrating his own personal, 300-mile transportation and trading line that would eventually lead to the-then unheard of Klondike goldfields. Over the trail, favoured for driving fresh meat on the hoof to markets, was a good deal of timber and large stretches of lush grazing fields.

Partners and employees of Dalton's jested that trying to avoid payment might result in a person vapourizing into thin air. Anybody who had been on the wrong side of Dalton feared the joke might be the truth. He defended his monopoly as tenaciously as the Chilkats had for generations guarded their ancient trade routes.

About 1895, one brazen dude decided he was going to drive a small herd of cattle over the trail without paying toll. Dalton was just as adamant the unidentified interloper wasn't.

Dalton appeared at trailhead. He was wearing his usual costume of black, wide-brimmed hat, bandanna, suspenders, long johns under denims and wool shirt, calf-high leather moccasins and sporting a stylish, neatly-groomed, blond moustache. His trusty revolver was strapped on his belt and a downward-pointing rifle was in his hand.

He promised to shoot the first man or beast that set foot on his domain without paying the $2.50 per head fee. The party moved ahead, anyway, scrambling alongside the right-of-way, thrashing through dense bushes and thick timber, while an armed Dalton patroled the 300 miles, laying in wait for one hoof or boot to stray over the line.

Skeptics were instant converts. Nobody argued the point again. Travellers decided the 20 cents to $2.50 levies were fair prices to traverse the easiest route to Fortymile and other gold camps.

By 1896, he had firmly established three trading posts along the route: one was Dalton Cache, designated a National Historic Place, that was built an inch from the international border where the present-day U.S. Custom station is located at Pleasant Camp, Mile 40 on the Haines Highway.

Another was Dalton Post, the abandoned site on a spur road off Mile 106 of the present-day Haines Highway.

The third was Champagne, an Indian village at historic Mile 974 on the present-day Alaska Highway.

Champagne was originally known as Champlain's Landing. The lore is that this trading place was christened with a new name after Dalton's men celebrated a successful cattle drive to here and cracked a bottle of French bubbly. Subsequently, "Champlain" was bastardized into Champagne.

The first significant and legitimate cattle drive on record was in the summer of 1896. The 40 head may have been owned by Dalton, and he had hired the herders and a butcher; or a cattle dealer contracted Dalton to drive the freight-packing steers to market. Whichever, Willis Thorpe, two sons and two other men, plus butcher George Bounds, were said to have arrived in a new townsite of Dawson City in early September, 1896. Some of the meat went downriver to Fortymile.

Dalton Needs a Survey of His Transportation Route to the Klondike

A month earlier, on August 17, news of a fabulous gold strike surpassing all others reached Circle City, Alaska. A crush of miners descended on an 800-square mile area called the Klondike. Everybody needed feeding.

In Dawson City, the likeable Dalton met the venerable government land surveyor, William Ogilvie.

Dalton wanted his trail surveyed and made some tentative arrangements with Ogilvie who was in the Yukon fixing survey points for the international boundary. He had indefinite plans to head home by way of the Panhandle with Dalton and map the 300 miles of Dalton Trail from Fort Selkirk to Chilkat Inlet.

The plans crumbled. The news from Ottawa about the demise of the joint U.S.-Canada boundary commission, for which Ogilvie was expected to be appointed Canada's commissioner, was delayed until the last boat of the season. By the time he was instructed to come home, an early freeze-up trapped him. Instead of trekking overland in life-threatening temperatures and at great cost, he decided to participate in the historic Klondike excitement.

Ogilvie brought order out of chaos. He surveyed the freshly-laid out Dawson townsite and diplomatically calmed the agitated miners whose 150 or so hastily-staked claims on Bonanza and Eldorado creeks were in confusion and dispute.

In 1897, American surveyors were working on the coast. Their survey and mapping of Dalton's trail on the U.S. side of the border ended at the point where Dalton and others thought the international boundary was located.

Until survey reports were concluded and submitted around July, 1898, it was premature to conclude if a practicable road to interior Alaska had been discovered from the old Chilkat trail that traversed two countries (U.S./Canada) and three jurisdictions (Alaska/British Columbia/Yukon Territory).

Meanwhile, Dalton was allowed to extend the trail beyond the U.S. border to the Chilkat summit and on into British Columbia and the Yukon. But he could not collect toll on foreign soil.

About 800 head of cattle, mostly belonging to Goodall, Perkins & Company, went over the trail in 1897 without the slightest difficulty, and nearly 2,000 head of cattle and an equal number of horses were driven over the trail in the summer of 1898.

The cattle came from Seattle and Vancouver on steamships, up the thousand miles of Inside Passage, landed at Haines Mission stock pens, and were organized for the drive over the Dalton Trail to the Yukon River and floated on scows downriver to Dawsonites.

The Klondike stampede was ignited earnestly in 1897. A North West Mounted Police post, occupied until 1904, was built at Dalton Post to collect taxes and look after sundry gold rush business. It was 21-year-old Jack Dempster's first police posting when coming to the Yukon the same year.

Dalton Post was never a big settlement. An October 4, 1898, census of the permanent inhabitants living in and around Dalton Post listed slightly over a hundred Stick Indians; Dalton, one of his employees and a police officer evidently accounted for the three white men.

Between 40,000 and 60,000 gold seekers poured into the Klondike from every conceivable direction in 1897. Starvation was a critical concern for the bloated boomtown that winter.

Agents for Alaska Commercial Company and other merchants were authorities on the subject of keeping adequate food supplies on the shelves and in the bins. They were in a panic, scrambling madly to increase food orders with their San Francisco home offices. But it would be spring before new provisions could be transported up the river in supply boats from St. Michael's. And the Chilkat Pass restricted Dalton's domestic herds to a three-month summer window.

Reindeer Relief Program Met With Failure

The wheels of a disastrous United States Relief Expedition went into motion. The plan was hatched by Presbyterian minister Sheldon Jackson, who was politically well-connected in Washington, D.C.

Reindeer, indigenous to such climes and conditions, would pull supply-laden sleighs over the Dalton Trail and along the frozen river. On arrival in Dawson, the deer would be slaughtered for food.

Due to logistical problems, the relief program was abandoned. Three weeks later, a herd of 526 reindeer and 57 Lapland herders showed up at Haines on March 30, 1898.

The supply of reindeer moss brought along from Norway had been consumed long ago. While men desperately scouted for appropriate fodder around the coastal village, the creatures had to dine on farm-animal rations. Evidently, dried alfalfa didn't suit their systems. Daily, four or more animals keeled over dead.

Dalton was aware of a hillside of suitable moss behind Dalton Post, a mile beyond Neska-Ta-Heen, and an abundance of reindeer fodder in the Chilkat Pass area. By May, when the snow was melting in the higher altitudes, only 164 starving reindeer were still alive to stagger up into the pass to feed.

Understandably, Inspector Jarvis and his party were a tad jolted to have such exotic company filing by their North West Mounted Police checkpoint, built next door to Dalton Cache at the U.S.-Canada border.

Jumping ahead chronologically, it was late January, 1899, after a mass Klondike exodus, that the decimated herd was driven past Dawson and on to Circle City, Alaska, where that gold rush also had petered out in favour of Nome diggings.

It had been Dalton's foresight to punch out a cattle trail that had saved the throngs of grateful Klondikers, who held their saviour in high-esteem.

Then Dalton patterned a miniature Pony Express Company after the fabled Pony Express of 1860-61. He purchased 250 good saddle horses and started a passenger and mail service that connected the Alaska coast with Dawson-based riverboats operating on the Upper Yukon River. But his unique Pony Express only delivered one batch of letters and parcels in the summer of 1898 before the government awarded its mail contracts to riverboat companies.

After steamboats began churning the river, much of the expected traffic over his trail didn't materialized. The client base began to wither as the bloom faded from the Klondike rose and gold seekers rushed off to the Alaskan goldfields.

Although the Dalton Trail was the longest route to the Klondike goldfields, it was a far sight easier and cheaper trip than hiring Indian packers and enduring the numerous hard climbs necessary to wrestle 2,000 pounds of supplies over the Chilkoot Pass, or even the White Pass where hundreds of horses perished. Yet the commercial Dalton Trail never gained the popularity of the other two competitive routes between 1896 to 1898.

Gold Discovery at Porcupine Creek, Alaska

On one of the 1897 cattle drives for Goodall and Perkins, a driver named Mix noted colours in the flood-prone Porcupine Creek early in the entourage's journey.

The next summer, 1898, Mix and two friends, Ed Fenley and Perry Wiley, panned a worthwhile amount of coarse gold from the eight-mile-long tributary of the Klehini River, a convenient 30 miles from Haines.

The Discovery mining claim, plus an adjacent One Below, were staked by the discoverer; each of the other men were allowed to stake an adjoining claim, No. 1 Above Discovery and No. 2 Below Discovery. These proved out as the richest claims in what formed the Porcupine Mining District in October, 1898.

By November, a flurry of activity sparked a mini gold rush. Roughly 50 prospectors had staked along Porcupine Creek and its tributaries of McKinley, Cahoon and Glacier. Dalton got his foot in the door early, grubstaking miners. He provided money, food and equipment in exchange for a percentage of whatever gold might be recovered.

In keeping with gold-rush tradition, the first structures to pop up were a few small cabins and canvas tents. Dalton laid out a 150-acre townsite, accessed by his Dalton Trail. Obviously, Dalton didn't have a cathedral ego otherwise he would have dubbed the townsite Dalton City, or some such title, rather than Porcupine.

The Dalton Trail Company paid to survey the lots and started a scheduled stage service for passengers, goods and mail. The Haines supply port gave easy access to important trade centres like Juneau, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco.

Immediately, Dalton built a sawmill, the most important business to start any new town and mining area. Lumber was in big demand to construct sluice boxes and rockers, used as the early labour-intensive mining method.

Construction of sturdy, one-and-two-storey fenced buildings with neatly stacked cord wood at the side began to give the one-street town a permanent air.

Dalton and his partner, Ed Hanley, billed both nations equally, flying the Stars and Stripes and the British Union Jack from the roof of Porcupine Trading Company's general store.

The Porcupine Creek area was very close to Alaska's border with Canada's province of British Columbia. Since the international boundary line was still in dispute in 1899, the 200 residents went about their daily business, not knowing--and not particularly caring--whether they worked and resided in America or Canada. A North West Mounted Police officer was posted on the Canadian side until the boundary issue was unraveled in 1904, though not finalized for another 16 years.

Based on an interim 1895 line that dipsy-doodled between the two countries, travellers proceeding to and from Porcupine Creek were forced to cross into Canadian territory. A pact between the two governments waived duty.

Miners were permitted to follow the Dalton Trail between Porcupine Creek and the junction of the Klehini and Chilkat rivers at Wells Bridge/Klukwan. They could step over into the Canadian side of the temporary line wherever the Dalton Trail crossed into British Columbia without suffering any penalty.

Porcupine hosted the Dalton-built Lindsay Hotel, though operated by another Haines pioneer family. After a back-breaking day on the creeks, miners could fortify at any of four watering holes and buy a meal at a restaurant. The thriving town hosted its own mining recorder's office that administered U.S. mining codes. By 1901, a post office opened.

The first full season, 1899, independent miners manually recovered $50,000 worth of gold using only picks and shovels; rockers and sluice boxes separated the gold from the gravel.

Miners went as far as they could. Easy pickings gave way to sophisticated and expensive mining methods that only financially-solvent companies could afford. Juneau lawyer John Maloney, a backer of Dalton Trail Company, joined the Dalton-Hanley partnership.

The threesome purchased controlling interest in placer properties from individual miners. Included in the package were the Discovery and three other claims originally staked by Mix, Fenley and Wiley. Dalton's mining company built a large, narrow sloping channel called a flume to divert water and expose the streambeds. Heavy machinery dug out a reported $150,000 worth of gold seasonally for the next five years.

Typical Tiff Over Claim Ownership Results in a Lawsuit

Somewhere out of the fog materialized the five-partner Alaska United Mining Company, suspicioned to have had ties with the Juneau-based Alaska Treadwell Gold Mining Company.

The Alaska United principals were: Pete Hall, William Chisholm, James Hansen, John Dalton and Dan Sutherland.

The McKinley Creek Mining Company's handle was derived from its primary operation on a tributary to Porcupine Creek. The eight principals were: C.G. Lewis, Bert Woodin, Edwin Hackley, Alex McConaghy, Carl West, William S. Hawes, Charles P. Leitch and C.P. Cahoon. Cahoon's name is attached to another tributary of Porcupine Creek.

Alaska United launched a lawsuit against McKinley Creek Mining to establish title to two placer mining claims on McKinley Creek. One of the four lawyers was Maloney. Alaska United won its case that was heard in a lower court before a judge and jury about 1901. McKinley Creek Mining appealed the decision under s. 500 of the Oregon Code in order to uphold the suit in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The problem stemmed from an incident in October, 1898, before the jumble of men took sides in the formation of the two different corporations. Sutherland, Hansen, Chisholm and Dalton were working at Pleasant Camp in Alaska along with Hall, Hawes and Cahoon. All were working for William Chisholm.

Hansen, Sutherland and Cahoon were prospecting the Porcupine area. Cahoon was given the power of attorney: "Know all men by these present that Peter Hall, William Chisholm, William Hawes of Pleasant Camp, British Columbia, have made, constituted and appointed, and by these present do make, constitute, and appoint C.P. Cahoon, of Pleasant Camp, British Columbia, our true and lawful attorney, for us and in our names, place, and stead, to locate a mining claim in the territory of Alaska."

The document was signed, sealed and delivered by Hall, Chisholm and Hawes in the presence of Dan Sutherland on October 4, 1898. On that date, the party was furnished with provisions and set out for what subsequently was named McKinley Creek.

Gold was discovered, a precedent condition to locate a valid placer claim. Cahoon, the power of attorney, wrote notices of location on a stump in the creek on behalf of Chisholm and for Hall, the absentee locators of the claims.

On October 6, 1898, Hall claimed 1,500 feet running down McKinley Creek and 300 feet on each side from center. His claim was the east extension of Chisholm's claim, about 1,800 feet from the first falls above the Porcupine, in the district of Alaska. Chisholm's contiguous claim was the west extension of Hall's and about 300 feet above the first falls above Porcupine Creek in the district of Alaska.

Cahoon staked Chisholm's first and Hall's next. On October 20, 1898, the two men cut trails and did some work on the two claims. It seemed straight forward.

The crux of the problem boiled down to who discovered gold first? Don Sutherland, an Alaska United Mining partner, who located the claim; or Edwin Hackley, a partner in McKinley Creek Mining, which was claiming the location.

Another conflict ensued. Did Hackley protest when Cahoon, the power of attorney, wrote the notices of location for Chisholm and Hall? Did Cahoon, in promising to take down the notices, authorize Hackley to do it? Upon Hackley declining, was authorization given to Lewis, a partner in McKinley Creek Mining, to take down the notices and relocate Chisholm's and Hall's claims farther up the creek? Did Lewis do it?

Chisholm's and Hall's citizenship became an issue. The accusation was put forth that the power of attorney under which Cahoon acted was said to represent the claimholders as citizens of British Columbia.

Citizenship shouldn't have come up as a complaint. Anybody 18 years of age could stake a claim in British Columbia; and "aliens", as the United States referred to foreigners, had all the rights of an American citizen to stake and own claims in Alaska.

The only question of importance to the claimholders should have been to determine which side of the border the claims were on and ensure registration was in the proper mining recorder's office.

In delivering the upper court opinion, Mr. Justice McKenna cited case history (Doe ex dem. Goveneur v. Robertson, 11 Wheat. 332, 6L. ed. 488) in which that judge had relied on statesman Francis Bacon.

"'Every person is supposed a natural-born subject that is resident of the Kingdom and that owes a local allegiance to the King, till the contrary be found by office,' says he (Bacon). This reason, it will be perceived, applies with double force to the resident who has acquired of the sovereign himself, whether by purchase or by favor, a grant of freehold."

The upshot of McKenna's ruling was that "the location by an alien and all the rights following from such locations are voidable, not void, and are free from attack by anyone except the government."

The court, discovering no error in law, upheld the lower court decision and dismissed the appeal case against Alaska United Mining Company on January 6, 1902.

Dalton was as busy as usual with his mining and attendant enterprises for the next two years.

Then, in February, 1904, another tentative boundary line was surveyed by Captain Wilds P. Richardson, a United States army engineer based at Fort William H. Seward near Haines. His assistant was a police officer in charge of the North West Mounted Police post, nearly 40 miles inland from the coastal town.

Their survey line cut between the Dalton Cache and the police post. As intended, the police post remained inside Canada; Dalton's roadhouse stayed an inch inside United States territory. Upon reviewing blueprints of Richardson's survey, the boundary commission, in its wisdom, kept the border in turmoil by choosing a different line. Nevertheless, the police post and Dalton Cache were allowed to stay within their respective countries.

In the summer, two Canadian parties of 10 men were working at the Dalton Cache/Pleasant Camp location. To the northeast, an American crew of 15 men worked on the Chilkat and Kelsall rivers.

"Until late July, the party, assisted by Indians with their canoes, worked to get their outfit to the mouth of the Kelsall River, about fourteen miles up the Chilkat River from Wells (near Klukwan), the point where the Dalton Trail left the Chilkat (River)," author Lewis Green explained in his book, The Boundary Hunters.

"Finally, on July 20, 1904, with river conditions just right, the final load was brought up by Jack Dalton's small sternwheeler, Chilkat."

It was the first time the Chilkat had attempted this section of the river and, though it grounded three times, the Indian pilot made the 14-mile run in nine hours, wrote Green.

"From the mouth of the Kelsall River, the men cut twelve miles of trail to the boundary and bridged the river near it. By the end of the 1904 season, the Canadian and U.S. parties had marked the boundary line and cut most of the vista between Mount Ashmun and Mount McDonnell, about sixteen miles in a direct line. This section covered the Dalton Trail and most of the nearby area being prospected for placer gold and copper deposits."

However, a spring flood of 1905 consumed Porcupine Creek and its tributaries of McKinley, Cahoon and Glacier. The Porcupine diversion ditch was destroyed. All the mining equipment not carried away in the current was buried in the mud. And the exposed gold-bearing streambeds were rendered unworkable when they re-filled with muck and gunk.

Although all mining operations folded, spelling an end to the first phase of Porcupine mining, Dalton had prospered from his investments. By the time other companies came in to buy out his claims, repair the damage, build a road for economical freight hauls and finally resume mining, Dalton was off on his lesser-known masterful feats of blazing trails and building roads and rail-beds in south-central Alaska.

Dalton Pops a Problem Government Agent

One gigantic task was blazing the coal-haul trail from Chickaloon to Knik in 1914.

For whatever reason, one of the command-and-control government freaks wanted to impede progress, probably because he was piqued at being shown up by Dalton's know-how. The agent refused to pay the workers.

Dalton didn't like being crossed at 60 years old any more than he had at 40. He was still hard as a railroad spike, his temper in tact. He decided the agent needed a lesson in ethics. With one powerful blow to J. Swift's jaw, Dalton flattened him.

While the agent was counting stars, Dalton was counting out money from his own pocket to pay the workers. Work resumed without a hint of further disruptions. The crew held the boss in awe.

On February 4, 1914, Dalton dictated a tactful report to a stenographer from his camp at Mile 45, Knik, Alaska. The letter was addressed to J.F.A. (John Franklin Alexander) Strong at Juneau, the capital of Alaska since 1912. Strong, a Democrat and former editor of the Nome Nugget, had been appointed the eighth Alaska governor on May 21, 1913, but he didn't get far into his renewal mandate. He had to resign in 1918 when his cloaked Canadian citizenship was uncloaked. He also forgot to divorce his Canadian wife before marrying an American woman.

"My dear Governor," Dalton began, respectfully. "Thought you might appreciate a line in regard to the movement of the coal. The hardest work in connection with this undertaking has been the building of roads. We had to build about 35 miles of road through a rough part of the country before reaching the coal fields and had a good deal of snow to contend with just as that time.

"Owing to the heavy and deep overflows, we were driven off the river on to gravel bars, which we had to build up with snow then ice, by means of a large water tank which I had built. In that way we were enabled to haul our heaviest loads without relaying or unloading.

"Notwithstanding the drawbacks and obstacles we have had to contend with, good progress has been made, and we will have all the coal at the landing by March first, if not before, and all in good shape and dry.

"We have been using some of the coal in our camps and also for blacksmith work and everyone pronounces it first class.

"We have had a little trouble with the disbursing agent, Mr. J.W. Swift. Upon his refusal to take care of the local accounts for the expedition, I had to pay some myself.

"The road we have built will always be a benefit to the prospectors and miners going into the Interior and there is quite a heavy travel over them now into the Nechina diggings."

In a post script, he added: "Had to put in several bridges on the river and now that the ice is leaving Palmer's Canyon, have another to build."

Under "Yours very truly", he signed his name in perfect penmanship.

Jack Dalton is most revered for the trail bearing his name. Although the mainstream circumvented it, the Dalton Trail served a very worthwhile purpose until supplanted by the completion of the 110-mile narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skagway to Whitehorse in 1900.

Dalton is less remembered for possessing the brawn and brains to bring the first packhorses over the Chilkat Pass in 1891, although sponsor Edward James Glave is the forgotten spirit behind the notion.

History has erased Dalton's masterful feats as mover and shaker for the New York-based Guggenheims' Copper River Railroad to the Kennecott Copper Mine and negotiating terms for the Cordova Bay dock facilities, sometime between 1907 to 1911; and for his organizing transportation of construction materials for the building of the Alaska Railroad main line between Seward and Fairbanks around 1915.

In 1915, the Seattle Star pronounced Dalton easily the first citizen of Alaska because Alaskans had absolute faith in his abilities.

Citizens no longer thought of Dalton as a violent man who bulled his way over other people. They accepted that a person breaking new ground to open up unsettled country often had to resort to physical persuasion, like the times he ousted the saloon-keeper from his property and when popping the government agent on the chin for refusing to pay accounts.

Because the public never was clear on the facts surrounding his killing a man, they forgave him that, too.

Over the years, respect mounted for Dalton exponentially as did his legend that was fueled by his legitimate and superhuman feats.

In Haines, where Dalton had leased a block of prime water front land in 1894, he had established the Jack Dalton Hotel and a store, managed by Charlie Hockett when Dalton sold out to Steve Sheldon. Dalton presumably left Alaska for the Lower 48 States around 1919.

He was roughly 65 years old, and perhaps worn out, when he moved to Yakima, Washington, where he engaged in other prospecting and mining projects.

Despite some setbacks in the north, he did well financially and had the fortune to participate in a string of adventures that culminated into an illustrious career.

Jack Dalton's trail ended in San Francisco in 1944 at the advanced age of 89, which further proves he was never a professional gunslinger!

He supposedly was buried in a family plot in Portland, Oregon. While his private life and family genealogy remain a mystery, the road builder's legend lives on in Alaska through one of his descendants. The Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay is named for Arctic engineer James William Dalton.

The Haines fathers named Dalton Street and established the historic Dalton City tourist attraction to pay tribute to one of the community's finest pioneers.

Regardless of a paradoxical image, Dalton is firmly fixed in the Alaska and Yukon psyche for his tireless work that was instrumental in opening the raw north country. He ranks among the great historic figures Jack McQuesten, Dr. George Dawson and William Ogilvie.

Dalton took o the double-barrelled personality because he didn't write his own memoirs; plenty of history buffs wish he had.

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(Information for this piece relied on Guide to the Yukon-Klondike Mines by G.P. Henley, Province Publishing Co., 1897; Yukon Places and Names by R.C. (Bob) Coutts, PR Services, 2003; Jimmy Kane by Cal Waddington, Alaska Sportsman, February, 1968; Pioneer Packhorses in Alaska by E.J. Glave, The Century Magazine, September, 1892; Ghost Town Trails of the Yukon by Don Sawatsky, Stagecoach Publishing Company, 1975; Prelude to Bonanza by Allen Wright, Studio North reprint, 1992; The Story of the Gun, a four-series A&E Network Home Video Production, produced by Greystone Communications, 1996; Christopher di Armani, personal communications, October, 2005; The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle by Lewis Green, University of British Columbia Press, 1982; Distant Justice: Policing the Alaskan Frontier by William R. Hunt, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987; The Alaskan, weekly newspaper editions published at Sitka, Alaska on July 23, 1892, and October 2, 1897. U.S. Supreme Court, appeal by McKinley Creek Mining Co. v. Alaska United Mining Co., 183 U.S. 563 (1902), decision rendered by Mr. Justice McKenna; The Dalton Trail Story by William D. MacBride, Whitehorse Star, 1966, Star Historical Edition reprint, July 18, 2000.)

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