Sailing Across Lake Bennett

Title: Sailing Across Lake Bennett

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Ian Andrews is currently a graduate student at MIT. He grew up in Juneau, Alaska and hiked the Chilkoot Trail after finishing his undergraduate studies. Ian hikes recreationally, from trails in his hometown, to spending a week hiking in the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.
Sam is a 40-year-old man from Juneau, Alaska. Sam grew up in Southeast Alaska, and currently works for the state government. Sam hiked the Chilkoot trail in 2015.

Contextual Data:

Historical Context: First used by the Tlingit people of Alaska as a trade route, the Chilkoot became an important trail for miners and prospectors coming to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush at the end of the 1800s. The trail was mostly abandoned after the end of the gold rush in 1898, until the trail was restored for recreational hikers in the 1960s. (Source)
Cultural Context: Lake Bennett is one of the significant landmarks along the Chilkoot trail, which hikers come to just after completing the hike to the Chilkoot Summit, the most difficult and dangerous section of the trail. Whitehorse is a city in British Colombia, and one of the major destinations for gold rushers after completing the Chilkoot portion of their journey.
Social Context: Sam and Ian individually brought up the boats at Lake Bennett when asked about interesting artifacts from the gold rush they saw while hiking.

Item:

When gold rushers arrived at Lake Bennett, they would need a boat to cross the large lake with their gear. As it was not feasible to transport an entire boat to the lake, they would bring some materials with them, but only construct the boat once they arrived at the lake. One of the informants mentioned that some of these boats would sink while crossing the lake, so the passengers would have to abandon ship and swim back to shore.

Transcript:

Ian: “At lake Bennet, [the gold rushers] would get to the lake and have to build a ship out of the nearby trees. Some people would go halfway across and start to sink, so they would have to swim back.”
Sam: “There’s one point when you are heading down through the rocks in the Lake Bennett area where there’s a metal framework of a boat sitting on the rocks… People couldn’t build very big boats because they had to navigate little passes while they were working their way to Whitehorse. They hauled quite a bit of the construction material with them, like canvas or whatever they using for the hull.”

Collector’s Name: Soren Thompson

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive