#6: 3 of 6--Robinson's Roadhouse, Cool.

Let’s go see Robinson Roadhouse!” I kept badgering my friends. I’d been there last year. 

They were not excited. “What’s there?” they wanted to know.

“An old supply station for the White Pass and Yukon Rail!”

So what.

Are you kidding me? 

White Pass and Yukon Rail
VictorPhotography.org

So let me fill you in. The White Pass and Yukon Rail was/is the Gold Rush train between Skagway, AK, on the coast and Whitehorse, Yukon, in the interior—and the Yukon River where miners boated 500 miles downriver to the gold fields. The train took two years, two months, and two days to build—by then the gold was gone. Pretty much. Yet both the train and Skagway survived as transport and port for other minerals prevalent in the Yukon. But to build it in the first place? It wasn’t just the ridiculously steep slope, tight turns, and brutal weather conditions that made this one bear of a job. It was the international hoopla.

Bureaucracy can strangle the most beneficial of projects, but surmounting two governments? Which is why the WP and YR had to think outside the box to get the job done. And why the Red Line Transportation Company--and Robinson's Roadhouse--Canadian persona for the WP and YR.

Before I dive into this any deeper, forget the international hoopla for just a minute. The gold rush train of 1898 was immediately daunting on a local level. Everyone in Skagway was anxious for the train to go in. You bet. It would bring miners by the thousands to their fair city, whisk the Klondikers easily up the pass to the gold fields. Goodbye to the wretched three-month journey, so severe it allowed only one out of every ten people trying to actually make it through. So Skagway wanted the tracks well enough, there was money to be made, but no one wanted the tracks running right down Broadway, the main thoroughfare. Put the track over a block, they said. Run it along the mountain foot to the east.

A heated city council meeting on May 28 resulted in a tabled discussion, to be resumed in the morning. Mike Heney, the train’s chief engineer, however, simply waited for everyone to go to bed and then ordered the tracks be laid while they slept. By morning it was a done deal. The tracks were running right up Broadway and ascending the valley floor. You snooze, you loose.

He did it again when he hit the summit and the Canadians refused for some reason to let him cross. Stifling a yawn, he waited for the Mounties to go to bed. By morning the tracks were well into Canada and under jurisdiction of Heney’s Red Line Transportation Company—Canadian persona of the WP and YR . 


In charge was William Robinson, a “take no nonsense” kind of guy, well over 300 pounds and six feet tall. General Manager of the Red Line, he was responsible for transporting all supplies from the track’s end as it came south out of Whitehorse. According to the WP and YR’s president, Samuel Graves, Robinson had “...a considerable reputation as a taskmaster whose bulk and mastery of profanity could provoke the indolent toiler into spirited action.” His headquarters? 

Robinson’s Roadhouse. 

 Initially it included a log cabin lodge, saloon, and three tents.

 

 

Very quickly it grew. More buildings went up, people moved in. On July 28, 1900, the golden spike was hammered down with great fanfare by Canadians and Americans alike, in Carcross on the northern end of Lake Bennett.

Eric Hegg Photograph, Carcross, Yukon: July 28, 1900

Robinson was the dude who handed that last celebrated spike to Mike Heney--who had the privilege of hammering it in place, now on display in Skagway’s Train Depot Gift Shop. The Gold Rush Train was complete and the Red Line was dissolved. 

But Robinson’s Roadhouse continued to grow because of a mini gold rush just west of the roadhouse in 1906. People talked about a town site. The surrounding 320 hectares were surveyed. A Mountie detachment arrived, “a man with a saddle horse.” But the gold fizzled. The expected population explosion fizzled. The roadhouse became a base camp for miners still looking for gold—lead, sliver, iron as well. When all that fizzled too, everyone drifted away and today all that exists are log structures that could have been anything.

“Cool!” my friends declared when I pried them out of the car. 

Wayne and Me
He'd just smacked me, trying
to ward off the mosquitoes
and I was laughing.
He was cooing.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

We slapped ourselves silly, mosquitoes tremendous. We went hopping over the tracks, backed up, took pictures, then rollicked down the trail to the meadow and falling-down log houses, lodges, whatever. It was like being a kid again, adventure before us, the clearing ahead opening, ahead, surprise rising to greet us.

We snooped around, still slapping ourselves and then each other. The size of nickels, the mosquitoes were so furious and vicious that they were actually drawing blood through  shirt sleeves. Finally, “I can’t stand it!”

Stanley. She’s squealing like something tormented. We’re all are. Tormented, squealing. But it’s she who does something about it and races like a deer before the wolf pack, back through the high grass, over the tracks, to the car—hoping to find some kind of mosquito spray. Our luck, she did.

Stanley coming back with the Off.

I hopped around, trying to ward off the mosquitoes long enough to get my hair dumped upside down and sprayed. Stanley sprayed Wayne’s open palms and he rubbed himself down, everywhere. We sprayed our clothes.  Bethany stood still while we sprayed her face. 

Bethany, freshly sprayed and smiling--Mona Lisa?

Even then, we couldn’t stay. The whining beasts were no longer landing, true, biting right through blue jeans, but were now hovering just inches away, all over, a cloud of constant advance and retreat. We dived back into the car, exhilarated, winded, smelly, thrilled.

“Why didn’t you tell us it was so cool?” they all asked.

“I did!”

“Yeah, but…”

I'll say it again: "Robinson’s Roadhouse is cool."