#11: Skagway's First Cabin and William Moore's Dream

Skagway's First Cabin
photograph by Brenda Wilbee

Twenty-one-year-old Ben Moore filed the 160-acre commercial homestead along Skagua Bay of SE Alaska in 1886, but it that is now Skagway, AK. The property was his, but it was his father’s dream. He knew gold lay beyond the mountains somewhere to the north, and to all who’d listen the old man predicted have a pack trail through pass, followed by a wagon road, eventually a railroad track. Few agreed. 

“Well, I hope the undertaking you folks have started here will fulfill your expectations," was one remark, "but I am afraid you are losing time and energy here in this." Ben writes: “These were the same discouraging remarks we always heard about our Skagway Bay wharf and land location.”

Ignoring the naysayers, Ben and his dad worked diligently (though sporadically) to “prove up,” but were often diverted by the need to fund themselves. They piloted steamships or worked in the sawmills and salmon canneries. William Moore appealed to financiers and hired help whenever funding came in. Father and son bumbled along like this for ten years. Finally, in April of 1896, Ben decided to move his family up permanently. He wrote:

My wife and I  worked together fixing up the log house, chinking it better, putting in a good window, a back and a front door a rough floor, and making pieces of rough bunks and furniture out of poles.

Shortly afterward, his father announced good news: He’d gotten substantial financial backing from an English company. In exchange for a half interest in the property, they’d receive a cash advance of $1800. Under the newly formed Alaska and Northwest Territories Trading Company (A&NWTT Co), Ben headed for Juneau to purchase 6,000’ of lumber, a couple of cows, two horses, chickens, pigs, some blacksmith’s tools, shingles, groceries. He returned with George Buchanan, formerly of Enumclaw, WA, along with two native youths, John Jack and Dick Hindle.

Four months later Skookum Jim found The Gold on August 17, 1896.

Skagway 1896
Library of Congress LC-USZ62-122304 4-75

"Mooresville" had just gotten started, boasting only the small cabin, a lean-to blacksmith shop, a bunkhouse, and a rudimentary wharf. It would be a year, however, before word could get to the Outside. Ben and his father--and the newly formed A&TWTT Company--used that time to get their ducks in a row.

Compelled now by a sense of urgency and with an additional $50,000 from London, coupled with supervisors and hired hands sent up from Victoria, "Moorseville" started to take shape: An expanded wharf, a saw mill, another bunkhouse; the trail widened along the river’s west bank, bridges going in over the creeks and across the river up the east side. A frenzied time.

Captain Moore, now seventy-five years old, wrapped up his affairs and arrived mid-May to a hive of production under management of his British-appointed directors. He headed up the trail with two helpers. By July he had ten to fifteen men on the job. Mid-month, on the 14th, he declared White Pass Trail open. On July 29, the stampeders arrived. Ten years he’d waited. Ten years.

Two hundred miners tumbled off the Queen onto his dock. Within a days, hundreds more. Within a week, a thousand more flooded his beach with all the flotsam of selfish humanity. A fellow by the name of Frank Reid borrowed some surveying equipment and proceeded to plat “Skagway” on top of “Mooresville.:

Broadway,  August 1897, Skagway, AK

The Moores and their A&NWTT Co. objected. They posted notices. They sent their wharf manager with warnings. But their complaints were run up a flagpole of indifference and left to snap in the wind.

Ten years it had taken Captain Moore to see this day—sorry fruition. He and his London backers filed a lawsuit for full recovery of their stolen property; it would take three years to resolve.

Today we have the cabin still marks the start of "Moorseville/Skagway," but there is no memory now of the bitter acrimony. Inside, however, its walls are lined with faded newspapers and yellow columns of small print that whisper tales of other unsavory greed and theft. This is, after all, a gold rush town.

But it's not the  end of Ben and William's story.

Not by a long shot. One cabin became many, and in the end the Moores owned 25% of the assessed value of every merchant on the land they stole.

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If you're interested in more on Skagway, you can purchase my book Skagway: It's All About The Gold by clicking on the cover image in the right sidebar.