Lillian Alling (11 page)
Lillian's choice of transportation was not an unusual one for this region. With no roads and few trails, but with plenty of fairly navigable rivers, locals and visitors alike used boats and rafts of all kinds as a main form of transportation. “When the ice at last cleared,” wrote Archie Satterfield in his book
After the Gold Rush
, “they launched an armada of steamboats, canoes, rowboats, skin boats and rafts called âfloat-me-downs' that they sold for lumber in Dawson City.”
12
Even children were trusted to float down the river safely towards Dawson. Alex Van Bibber, who as an adult was a well-known big game guide and outfitter, described his trip down the river from Pelly Crossing toward Dawson to attend boarding school at St. Paul's Hostel:
To get to school in Dawson in September, we used a raft. My dad wouldn't see us paying for tickets on a sternwheeler when the river ran in that direction anyway. So he built a raft and loaded us on it with a bunch of vegetables. Before he pushed us out into the current, the old man would give us some advice. “If the raft starts to get water-logged, just pull into a drift pile and tie a few more logs on to give it some buoyancy. It'll keep floating that way.” We were still pretty young and scared of bears, so most of the time we would sleep right on the raft. When we did spend the night on the beach, we'd make sure we were real close to that raft, and if we heard any noises, we didn't waste any time poling it out into the river again. All us kids would just huddle together in an old broken down sleeping bag that we'd sell or just throw away after we got to the other end.
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Alex was one of the sixteen children of Ira Van Bibber, who was originally from West Virginia, and his wife, Eliza, affectionately known as “Short.” She was a Tlingit of the Crow clan and was originally from Juneau, Alaska. They owned two roadhouses in Pelly Crossing.
But Lillian was not destined to continue her journey on her “float-me-down” all the way to Dawson City. According to an article written by Irving J. Reed for
Alaska Life
in June 1942, when she showed up at the confluence of the two rivers on her roughly hewn home-made raft, it looked “so dangerous that a sourdough along the bank took pity on her. He gave her his boat so that she might continue more safely her journey from the mouth of the Stewart, down the Yukon River to Dawson.”
14
The fact that all further sightings of her on her river travels place her in a boat rather than on a raft suggests that this was probably how and where she acquired it.
By now readers of the
Whitehorse Star
and the
Dawson News
were becoming anxious for word of the “mystery woman.” The weather had been blustery ever since the storm that had held Lillian up for three days at the mouth of the Stewart River. But most of them knew exactly how long it took to float down the Yukon from there to Dawson, and she was definitely overdue. Where was she? The
Dawson City News
reported:
Lillian Alling, “mystery woman” hiker, who reached Ogilvie Monday night [October 1], and who pulled out by small boat from that island, fifty miles above [south of] Dawson, the following day has not yet reported here.
15
Then on October 6 the
Dawson News
was able to report that all was well. Lillian had been “held windbound at Swede Creek for two days” and then “finally set sail Friday morning [October 5].”
16
As Swede Creek is just a few miles from Dawson, readers could expect her to arrive in Dawson any moment. And she did.
The
Dawson City News
then recapped Lillian's journey for its readers:
She braved the perils of the overland trail through the Yukon arriving safely at Stewart Crossing from which point she made the balance of the journey to Dawson by small boat. Unaccustomed to oars and unfamiliar with the tortuous channel of the mighty Yukon, forced to endure the biting wind and frost of an impending winter, the woman traveler spent the most trying and uncomfortable hours of her long trip in making the last lap, from Stewart City to Dawson.
17
Â
- (1)
Coates, Ken S. and William R. Morrison.
Land of the Midnight Sun.
Edmonton, AB: Hurtig Publishers Ltd., 1988, page 198. - (2)
Berton, Laura Beatrice.
I Married the Klondike
. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2006, page 136. Originally published: McClelland & Stewart, 1961. - (3)
“Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson,” the
Whitehorse Star
, October 19, 1928. - (4)
“The Mystery Woman,” the
Whitehorse Star
, September 7, 1928. - (5)
Carmacks is named after George Washington Carmack. He and his brother-in-laws, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found the Discovery claim in 1896 while fishing on the Klondike River. Their discovery was the spark that kicked off the Klondike gold rush. - (6)
“The Mystery Woman.” - (7)
“Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson.” - (8)
“The Mystery Woman.” - (9)
Frank, Jutta.
Abenteuer an Pelly und Yukon oder 6 Eier bis Dawson
. 2003 traveldiary.de, Reisliteratur-Verlag. Jens Freyler, Hamburg, page 61. - (10)
“Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson.” - (11)
Coutts, R.
Yukon: Places and Names
. Sidney, British Columbia: Gray's Publishing, 1980, page 82. - (12)
Satterfield, Archie.
After the Gold Rush
. Philadelphia & New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1976, pages 11â12. - (13)
Yardley, Joyce.
Yukon Riverboat Days
. Hancock House Publishers Ltd., 1996, page 88. - (14)
Reed, J. Irving. “Did She Reach Siberia?”
Alaska Life
, June 1942. - (15)
“No Report of Mystery Woman,”
Dawson News,
October 4, 1928. - (16)
“A Hazardous Trip: Walked Every Step of Way Hazelton to Stewart Crossing,”
Dawson News,
October 6, 1928. - (17)
Ibid.
Whether Lillian was hiding from the camera or just camera-shy, it is clear she was not going to take the time to pose. Detail of photo taken by Clifford Thompson. Dawson City Museum 1991.46.2.
Lillian Alling, having left Whitehorse on the morning of August 28, finally made it to Dawson City on Friday, October 5, and the
Whitehorse Star
reported that “practically all of that time she must have slept in the open.”
1
The next day the
Dawson News
announced her arrival to the residents of that former gold rush town who had been eagerly anticipating her arrival.
Lillian Alling, “mystery woman” hiker, reached Dawson by small boat Friday forenoon, thereby completing one of the most hazardous and unusual overland treks for a woman that has ever been recorded in the Northland ⦠[she] finally completed the last lap of her long journey shortly after 11 o'clock when she moored her frail craft to the south of the old Klondike Mines Railway bridge. Word that the long-expected woman adventurer had arrived here spread quickly, and few Dawsonites who saw the short, slight figure as she stepped briskly down Fifth Avenue into the center of town, where she sought food, but realized that this was the “mystery woman.”
2
Thirty-seven years later the moment of Lillian's arrival in Dawson city was still fresh in the mind of former
Dawson News
reporter Archie Gillespie when he told the
Yukon News
,
I was a reporter on the
Dawson News
at the time and happened to be walking along Front Street when I first noticed the tiny craft drifting down the Yukon River. It was unusual for a boat to be seen heading into Dawson at this late season of the year. My curiosity led me to walk down to the beach to see who was landing. It was hard to believe that anyone would be making the cold river journey in an open boat long after navigation had closed.
The last steamers had left for the south and few small craft had ventured out on the wind-swept river. Most of the flotilla of small boats had been pulled up on shore and anchored for the winter. So it was all the more surprising when a small rowboat rounded the bend above Dawson City and drew into the shoreline. Out of the small boat, which was no bigger than a skiff, stepped a small, thin woman, fatigue showing in every line of her haggard face, her tired eyes and the stoop of her slight shoulders.
3
Local banker Clifford Thompson was also on hand that day and took two photographs of her shortly after she docked her boat:
I arrived in Whitehorse in May 1928 to work in the Canadian Bank of Commerce during the summer and to go on to the Dawson Branch in September of that year. During that summer we heard reports about Lillian Alling, and about August she appeared in Whitehorse. I saw her in Whitehorse and she was very tanned and dark coloured. I heard she had left Whitehorse before I embarked for Dawson City in September. Mr. J.D. Skinner of the
Whitehorse Star
requested me to send him a weekly news bulletin by telegraph about any interesting news in Dawson and he particularly asked that I look out for the arrival of Lillian Alling in Dawson. One morning as I was going to open up the Bank, I saw Lillian Alling coming up the ferry slip, which in those days ran alongside the Bank. To the best of my knowledge this was early in October and I reported this news to Mr. Skinner. I got my camera and took two pictures of her, which I have in my possession. I endeavoured to have a talk to her but she became very angry and refused to talk.
4
This and the photo on page 150 are the last known images of Lillian. Detail of photo taken by Clifford Thompson. Dawson City Museum 1991.46.1.
Clifford Thompson also noted that as soon as Lillian arrived in Dawson City, she checked in with the police.
She was headed for the RCMP barracks and I later confirmed thru a member of the RCMP that she had reported in that morning. Later on in October I was told by the same RCMP member that she was to be detained in Dawson over the winter as the ice was forming in the river and it was not considered safe for her to travel downstream.
7
When Lillian Alling floated down to Dawson City, which lies at the junction of the Yukon and Klondike rivers, she was in the traditional territory of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nations people, speakers of the Hän language. As the Klondike River is famous for its salmon, they had a settlement at that junction long before Europeans arrived in the 1890s looking for gold. The town the gold seekers established was named after Dr. George Mercer Dawson, explorer and scientist, who was the director of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada from 1895 until his death in 1901.
In 1898, at the height of the gold rush, Dawson City's population was about forty thousand, but the stampede for gold was soon over, and by the time the city was incorporated in 1902 most of the newcomers had left and the population had dropped to five thousand. By World War I, its economy had been weakened by the waning of the gold mining sector; it was further dampened by the loss of 125 residents in the sinking of the SS
Princess Sophia
in the Lynn Canal near Juneau, Alaska, in October 1918. That same year the US removed its consulate, and two years later the
Dawson Daily News
ceased daily publication and became a weekly. Businesses gradually closed, people moved out of town or died and by the end of the 1920s, Dawson City seemed ready to die.
5
As a result, it was very much a bare-bones town that Lillian entered in the fall of 1928. Only the hardiest of northerners had remained for the oncoming winter.
Isobel Wylie Hutchison, who passed through Dawson a few years after Lillian was there, described it as:
a quiet little town of a few hundred residents, with echoing wooden sidewalks (whose loose or missing planks are a trap for the unwary), closed premises, tumble-down buildings and deserted cabins. Enclosures where houses once stood are piled with untidy lumberâold iron bedsteads, barrels, broken pots and pans.
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