Month: December 2019

On the Pelly Ranch Road about three kilometers from the Ranch property, there is a culvert containing a very small creek with clear, cold water.  This is the point where the creek emerges from the hills and onto the Pelly River valley bottom.  Not far from the culvert, the creek disappears into the porous soil before it can reach the Pelly River, less than a kilometer away.  

This is Benot Creek, inaccurately named by the Geological Survey of Canada geologist Hugh Bostock, who worked in the Yukon from 1931 to 1954.  He named it for Frederick Barnett, an American who came to the Yukon on the heels of the Klondike Gold Rush and staked out a homestead near the creek.  Just out of sight from the road near where it crosses the creek stand the remains of Barnett’s cabin.

Frederick Barnett was born in Lincoln, New Hampshire in 1888.  It is not known when he came to the Yukon, but in May 1915 he applied at Fort Selkirk for a 160-acre homestead fronting on the Pelly River six kilometers up the river from Pelly River Ranch.  The land inspector reported that the parcel was suitable for agriculture and contained no timber values (timber values on a parcel could sometimes result in an application not proceeding). 

In January 1916 Barnett’s homestead application was approved.  He proceeded to build a cabin in the bush almost a kilometer away from the river.  It was at the extreme northwest corner of his described homestead area, or perhaps even outside of it, presumably to be as close to the creek as possible. 

Barnett’s cabin shows some skills in building and axemanship, as noted by Dale Bradley of Pelly River Ranch.  The flat, axe-hewn inside surfaces of the logs as well as the tight corner joints are quite impressive.  It appears, however, that Barnett may have never completed the cabin because there are no obvious remnants of roof logs, either inside the building or leaning against the walls as is commonly seen in a cabin with a collapsed roof. 

Frederick Barnett signs up for War

There is a good reason why Barnett may not have finished his cabin.  His homestead was approved in January 1916 and he likely started building the cabin that spring.  However, in April he signed up for a big event – the First World War – that was to change his life and determine the fate of his homestead. 

Barnett’s attestation paper (application form) to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force was filed in Dawson and listed his address as Dawson, his occupation as a miner, and his next-of-kin as his friend Joseph Horsfall of Fort Selkirk.  Additional information showed that he was single and his parents were deceased. 

Barnett was assigned to the 231^st Overseas Battalion and was sent out with the second Yukon contingent in June.  He was officially enlisted on July 1 at Sidney, BC, where his battalion was training.  In January 1917 Barnettwas transferred to the 143^rd Overseas Battalion, which became a Railway Construction Battalion.  His unit sailed for England on February 17, 1917.

In Barnett’s homestead file, the next correspondence after approval of the homestead application was a letter in July 1920 from the Crown Timber & Land Agent in Dawson requesting information about what work had been done on the land.  The more than four year lapse in correspondence was likely because it would have been known that Barnett had signed up for military service and veterans were given some latitude for meeting their homestead obligations.

The reply from the land inspector in Fort Selkirk was that Barnett had not been seen nor heard from since leaving the Yukon in 1916.  The inspector reported that Barnett had built a cabin on the homestead property, but that no other work had been done there.

The Benot Creek name

I have known about Benot Creek for years from time spent at Pelly River Ranch.  Dick and Hugh Bradley at the Ranch said that it was named for a homesteader who built the cabin there, then went away to the First World War and never returned.  There seemed to be a question mark about the name and how to say it – the Bradleys pronounced it like ‘Ber-net’, with a near-silent ‘r’ and emphasis on the last syllable.  Their pronunciation was closer to ‘Barnett’, perhaps coincidentally, as I never heard them say that was the name of the man who built the cabin.

When I started researching the homestead, I also wondered about the name.  An internet search of Benot showed nothing relevant to Canada, and Canada’s online phone book (Canada411.ca) had only one Benot in the whole country.  It seemed highly unlikely that this could have been the homesteader’s name.  The breakthrough came with the finding of a file in the Yukon Archives for a homestead upriver of Pelly River Ranch in the name of Frederick Barnett.

With that mystery solved, the next one was how Benot Creek became an official place name that appears on maps.  The Yukon Government’s toponymist office (place names specialist) had information that the name was approved in 1968 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada, the federal agency that had jurisdiction at that time.  The approval had been based on information supplied by the geologist Hugh Bostock for a man who homesteaded in the area before the 1930s. 

The Board’s Secretariat at Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa was then contacted, as that organization has Yukon place names information that is not available in the Yukon.  They had additional information in the form of hand-written notes from Dr. Bostock in 1963, including this notation about Benot Creek: “name given me as a long-standing name after an old-timer, by people in Fort Selkirk in the 1930s”.  The name was officially approved in 1968. 

There is an approximate 30-year gap between when the Benot Creek name was provided to Bostock in the 1930s and when he passed along the information to the Geographical Names Board of Canada in 1963.  It is not known if the name was being used unofficially during all those intervening years.

The terms ‘long-standing’ and ‘old-timer’ used by Bostock, as well as Barnett’s friendship with Joseph Horsfall, indicate that Barnett had been around the Fort Selkirk area for a while.  However, Barnett was only 28 years old when he enlisted in the military and left the Yukon, so it would seem he hardly qualified as an old-timer.   Bostock may have been given erroneous information, but in any event he and/or his informants obviously did not know Barnett’s proper name.

Since the creek was already named for Barnett, it seemed that it should at least be the correct name, and I considered the idea of making a submission to the Yukon Geographical Place Names Board.  Barnett was an American and hadn’t lived in the Yukon for very long, but he appeared to have made a commitment to the country by taking out a homestead, and, more importantly, by going to war for Canada.

The personnel record

I was not able to trace Barnett after the war, so did this mean he perhaps also gave his life for this country?  A check of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database of those who died in the First and Second World Wars did not reveal his name.

This research on Barnett was being done at about the time that World War I personnel records were becoming available online from Library and Archives Canada.  When his file was finally processed and appeared online, I hoped it would reveal some insight into what happened to him.

The first page of his personnel record revealed that Barnett had not died in the war.  The page was a scan of a manila envelope that noted his name, rank, regimental number, and company.  This was followed by a single word in big red letters: Deserter.  Information in the file stated that he deserted on February 6, 1917, just 11 days before his unit sailed overseas to join the battle in Europe.  That ended any further thought about getting the little creek renamed in his honor.  

Barnett’s personnel record also referenced a Court of Enquiry, so contact was made with Charlie LeRoss, who runs a website dedicated to the “B.C. Bantams”, as the 143^rd Battalion was known.  He had little information on Barnett, but said that the personnel record should have the date of a Court of Enquiry, which was normally held for someone who deserted.  This was not the case for Barnett, so Mr. LeRoss thought it was possible that since he deserted just days before the Battalion left for overseas, the court may not have been held until it reached there, or was not held at all because the Battalion was broken up once it reached England.     

Barnett’s trail disappears

What happened to Frederick Barnett after he deserted his comrades before they sailed toward battle has not been determined.  Perhaps he would have thought it wise to get out of Canada and disappear into the United States. 

Barnett’s homestead was officially cancelled in September 1921.  The area is now a mature mixed forest with cattle trails running across it and a small road to a fish camp on the Pelly River.  His cabin walls still stand in the bush near Benot Creek, the remaining evidence of his life there. Perhaps if he had conducted himself more honorably, his correct name on the nearby clear, fresh Yukon creek would be his legacy.  For now, the maps will contain the meaningless name of Benot Creek, but perhaps a more appropriate name will be proposed for it someday.

Updated December 20, 2019

The discovery of gold on creeks of the southwest Yukon in July 1903 prompted a wave of people into the Kluane region.  Along with the gold prospectors came others to provide support services, including freighters, police and government officials, and roadhouse operators.

This story is about the Bear Creek Roadhouse, one of the early roadhouses that started with the Kluane gold rush.  However, this one persisted in various forms through the first decades of the 1900s, the building of the Alaska Highway, and into the 21^st Century to the present.  The roadhouse and its successors over the past 115 years make this one of the longest enduring places of entrepreneurship in the Yukon.

The roadhouse was built, likely during the fall of 1903 and over the following winter, at a site on Bear Creek 10 kilometers northwest of present-day Haines Junction.  It was along a trail that was to become the Kluane Wagon Road and later the Alaska Highway.  The roadhouse was initially established by one person, but then operated more or less continuously by the second owner from 1905 until around 1930.  This early period of the roadhouse history is the subject of this story.   

The roadhouse then fell into a lull for a few years, being operated in the winters only as a fur trading post.  In 1935 it was reinvigorated under new ownership and renamed Mackintosh Trading Post by the new owners, George and Dorothy Mackintosh. 

The business continued as Mackintosh Lodge under the next owners, Butch and Andy Nygren, who took it over in 1954, and then subsequent owners in the late 1970s, Gail and Bryant Jeeves, rebranded it as Bear Creek Lodge.  In 2009 the land and buildings were purchased by Ivan and Linda Thompson and became headquarters for a new type of enterprise, a forest harvesting operation called Bear Creek Logging.  However, rental of motel rooms on a longer-term basis is also part of their business, continuing a tradition of accommodation at Bear Creek.

Eli Proulx – the founder

The earliest reference to the Bear Creek Roadhouse is associated with a man named Eli Proulx.  He was born in 1861 in Ontario and is noted as a carpenter in most sources.  It is not known when he arrived in the Yukon, but one newspaper places him here by December 1900, and in 1901 and ’02 he is listed as being engaged in general merchandise in Whitehorse.  Following the gold discoveries in the Kluane region in 1903, he evidently headed in that direction and proceeded to establish a roadhouse.

The first reference to the roadhouse is in a newspaper article from February 1904, when a hotel liquor license for there was issued to Proulx.  This licence, granted under a liquor ordinance, was intended to allow the selling of liquor on condition that the premises met a prescribed standard.  It specified that there must be five bedrooms, a separate dining room, sitting room and bar room, and provide accommodation and feed for at least six horses.  The fee for the licence was $250 plus a $50 application fee, no small amount at that time. 

It is not clear if these building requirements had to be in place before the licence was granted, but a newspaper article of March 18, 1904 reported that Proulx “… is making extensive improvements to his buildings to meet the growing demand for accommodations …”.  This makes it apparent that Proulx had buildings in place by that time, meaning he probably started construction in 1903, and perhaps was upgrading them in 1904 to meet the liquor licence requirements.  There is no record of Proulx applying for land to cover his developments.  

The same newspaper article also reported that the White Pass & Yukon Route, the Yukon’s largest corporate entity at the time, was nearing completion of a large (40 feet by 50 feet) warehouse at Bear Creek and was cutting out a road to Marshall Creek, about 25 kilometers to the east.  These activities would have been in anticipation of offering freighting, provisioning, mail and perhaps other services to the new Kluane goldfields.  The company was well-positioned to do this, as it was already engaged in providing a riverboat service from Whitehorse to Mendenhall Landing on the new Kluane Trail as well as operating freight, passenger and mail services to Dawson along the Overland Trail.    

White Pass records show that in March 1904 the company paid Proulx and a Joseph Beauchamp $335 for providing meals to its employees.  There is no apparent relationship between Proulx and White Pass, and why they both established themselves at Bear Creek at about the same time is not known.  After the spring of 1904 there is no further reference to a White Pass presence there, perhaps because it was already becoming evident that the Kluane gold rush was not going to pan out to be the next Klondike.  The White Pass warehouse appears to still be at the site in 1918, so Proulx undoubtedly took it over.

Other newspaper articles tell of Proulx’s activities at Bear Creek over the following year and a half.  When he went to Whitehorse on business in May 1904, it was reported that he was known as “… an accommodating host and reliable business man” and that his “… roadhouse is one of the most popular on the trail” (by that time there were already about a dozen roadhouses established or in the process).  Later in 1904, the Kluane Wagon Road was built through the area and passed by the front door of Proulx’s roadhouse. 

In October 1905, Proulx was in Whitehorse on a trip and was with a partner, the Joseph Beauchamp who had worked with him feeding the White Pass employees.  The following month, the Whitehorse newspaper contained a notice of dissolution of the partnership of Proulx and Beauchamp by mutual consent.  The notice further said that ownership and operation of the Bear Creek Roadhouse would be carried on by Beauchamp.

Within a few months Eli Proulx was engaged in business in Conrad, the newly developing mining community on south of Carcross on the shore of Tagish Lake’s Windy Arm.  From there he went on to become a successful fox farmer near Carcross, he and his partner Carl Fouke being called the pioneer fox farmers of the Yukon.  Proulx was still doing this in 1924.

Joseph Beauchamp and his wives – the builders

While Eli Proulx was the only name initially associated with the Bear Creek Roadhouse, Joseph Beauchamp’s name appeared relatively early on as well.  Whatever the arrangement may have been when the two men were feeding White Pass employees in the spring of 1904, by October 1905 Beauchamp was referred to as a partner of Proulx and a month later he was the sole owner of the roadhouse.

Joseph Japhet Beauchamp was born in Quebec in 1866, the oldest of three boys who lost their father when Joseph was only five years old.  By 1881, when he was 15 years old, he was already living away from home, likely working to help support his family.

Beauchamp arrived in the Yukon in June 1900 and was living in Whitehorse in 1901, his occupation listed as a laborer.  Two years later, following the gold discoveries in the Kluane region, he found himself on the Kluane Trail and soon to be owner and operator of the Bear Creek Roadhouse.  This was to become his life for the next twenty-five or so years. 

An internet search for Joseph Beauchamp in the Yukon brings up a site called Skagway Stories, which contains a story about Joe Beauchamp of Bear Creek living in the very early 1900s in Skagway before moving to the Yukon, then moving back again and eventually dying and being buried there in 1935.  However, the time period that Joe Beauchamp was known to have been at Bear Creek shows that he could not have spent the time in Skagway as claimed.  Further research indicates that the man in Skagway, known as “Burro Joe”, was a different Joseph Beauchamp. 

In 1906 Beauchamp made application for 20 acres of land on the west side of Bear Creek and north side of the Kluane Wagon Road, covering his roadhouse and a stable.   Curiously, the sketch accompanying the application did not distinguish the White Pass warehouse, even though it would have been situated on the land applied for.  In the end, the land application did not amount to anything.

Beauchamp later submitted another land application, this one in 1911 for a homestead of 160 acres covering the same area as the previous application and much more.  By 1918 he believed he had fulfilled the homestead requirements by having 7-8 acres cleared for ploughing, 2-3 acres ready for mowing, and two barns and two stables.  Correspondence from the government said that Beauchamp “has erected thereon a first-class roadhouse, stables and other buildings”.  His plan to have the homestead land surveyed so that he could gain title to it never materialized, and the end result is that Beauchamp never owned any of the land he occupied and developed at Bear Creek.

Joseph Beauchamp became part of a community of people who lived along the length of the Kluane Wagon Road.  He attended a 1908 New Year’s Day gathering at Champagne that included roadhouse operators from other locations.  At the event he was noted as playing the piano along with Annie Chambers, the proprietress of the Champagne roadhouse.

In the spring of 1910, at the age of 44 and after six years of a relatively solitary life at Bear Creek, Beauchamp made a trip back to his roots in Montreal to marry his “faithful sweetheart of boyhood days”, according to the Whitehorse newspaper.  Her name was Blanche Lepage and she accompanied her new husband back to the Yukon to begin her new life with him at Bear Creek, 180 kilometers by wagon road from civilization at Whitehorse.  

In the fall of 1912, big game hunters returning from a trip to the White River area visited with Blanche at Bear Creek and found her to be very lonely and anxious to learn about happenings in the ‘outside’ world.  Later that fall the Whitehorse newspaper reported that Joe and Blanche were visiting Whitehorse, which for her was the first time in two and a half years since leaving there as a new bride.

Blanche’s lonely life at Bear Creek came to a tragic end the following February of 1913, and for Joe Beauchamp it was a double tragedy.  On February 8, Blanche prematurely gave birth to a baby boy who died after only a few hours.  Joe waited for Blanche to recover sufficiently for travel so that he could take her to Whitehorse for medical attention and to bury their baby there.  However, her health worsened and with no nearby neighbors to help, Joe could not leave her alone to seek assistance.  Twenty days after the death of her child, Blanche passed away on February 28 at the age of 40.

Joe prepared his wife’s body, built a box to transport her and the baby in, and made the long lonely trip with them to Whitehorse by horse and sleigh.  Funeral services were held on March 9 at the Catholic Church, followed by burial in the Pioneer Cemetery, Blanche together with her baby in the same coffin. 

Two and a half years later, Beauchamp married again, this time in Whitehorse, to Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Gray.  She was a 46-year old woman from Ontario who had been living with R.C. Miller, a well-known Crown Timber and Land Agent, and his family in Whitehorse for several years.  Joe and Lizzie’s small wedding was at the unseemly time of 7:00 in the morning on September 21, 1915, and three hours later, after an “elaborate wedding breakfast”, they were aboard their horse and wagon for the trip to Bear Creek.

Much of the Beauchamps’ operation of their Bear Creek Roadhouse was during a time of decreasing population in the Yukon, related to a decline in economic activity.  Where the population in 1901 had been over 27,000, by 1911 it was less than a third of that at about 8,500, and by 1921 it was less than half of that again at a little over 4,000 people.  The smaller population by the mid-1910s meant that use of the Kluane Wagon Road that passed by the Beauchamps’ door was occasional at best.  Mining activities in the region were at a relatively constant but low level.  New industries in the forms of big game hunting and fur farming were beginning to blossom, but they did not provide a lot of traffic that the Beauchamps could benefit from. 

In addition to running the roadhouse, Beauchamp branched out into other activities to help make his living.  He cleared land and dabbled in agriculture to the extent that the 1921 census listed him as a farmer, while Lizzie was a housekeeper (probably doing all the roadhouse work).  Though the climate and native soil at Bear Creek are fairly marginal, Beauchamp grew oats and at one point enough potatoes to sell in the Whitehorse market, including a variety he called the Bear Creek Wonder.  He wintered horses for the International Boundary Survey parties in 1915-16 and perhaps other winters, and was occasionally engaged by miners to haul freight from Whitehorse to Ruby and Fourth of July Creeks.

Beauchamp’s main additional activity, though, appears to have centered on furs.  He did some trapping himself and bought furs from the local First Nations people, which he took to Whitehorse and shipped to fur buyers in eastern Canada.  At some point, he began to build cabins a short distance to the north of his roadhouse/trading post to encourage local people to live close by.  This was the beginning of a small settlement that became a semi-permanent home base for a number of First Nation families for several decades. 

In the fall of 1919 a party of American big game hunters staying at the Bear Creek Roadhouse recorded that Beauchamp was trading with the First Nation people and that he and Mrs. Beauchamp lived in a large one-story log house.  Meals in the roadhouse were $2 and a bunk was $2 with blankets or $1 if the customer supplied their own bedding.

A few days after the hunters’ visit, in the early morning hours of October 17, 1919, the Beauchamps were struck a blow when their roadhouse caught on fire.  Joe was away in Whitehorse getting their winter provisions while Lizzie stayed at the roadhouse.  That night she had four guests, including Louis Jacquot from the Burwash Landing roadhouse and three men who were taking a packtrain of horses to Whitehorse following a big game hunting trip.  It was thought that a gasoline lamp exploded in the roadhouse dining room, and the fire then moved very quickly through the log building.  Lizzie and one of the men suffered some moderate burns in trying to rescue some of the Beauchamps’ possessions.  The roadhouse was burned to the ground with very few of its contents saved and the loss was estimated at $3,000, the equivalent of about $41,000 in 2019 dollars.

When Joe Beauchamp returned home, he and Lizzie moved into a nearby cabin belonging to a hunting outfitter.  The Whitehorse newspaper reported that “with characteristic energy … as soon as he got home he commenced to plan for the rebuilding of the roadhouse …”.  For whatever reason, he built basically a replica of his previous three-section roadhouse building.  In Whitehorse, the I.O.D.E. (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) collected donations of clothing and other supplies to help the Beauchamps get back on their feet.

By this time automobiles were becoming used more commonly on the Kluane Wagon Road.  Until a bridge was built over the Jarvis River in 1923 by the Jacquots of Burwash Landing, the Bear Creek Roadhouse was the change-over point from automobiles to horse and wagon.  Beauchamp likely acquired an automobile for his travels, but no information was found to confirm this.

Joe and Lizzie Beauchamp carried on their life at Bear Creek into the 1920’s, then in the summer of 1925 Lizzie went to Vancouver for treatment of an unspecified malady.  In the spring of 1926 she was again in poor health, and on April 26 she passed away at Bear Creek at the age of 56.  Joe temporarily buried her there, probably because spring break-up conditions at that time of year prevented travel on the wagon road.  He eventually was able to transport her body to Whitehorse, where she was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery.

Joe Beauchamp was by then over 60 years old, but he didn’t stay a widower for long.  In the summer of 1927 he travelled to Montreal and on June 15 married his third wife, 47-year old Clara Lafontaine.  They arrived back in the Yukon in mid-July and set off for Bear Creek.

Dorothy Mackintosh, who along with her husband George bought the Bear Creek Roadhouse in 1935, stated years later that Clara had lived there for a year, but she was not happy living in such an isolated place and urged Joe to sell and move into Whitehorse.  If this is true, it indicates that the Beauchamps may have left Bear Creek around 1928.  This is in line with the last newspaper reference to Joe Beauchamp at Bear Creek, which shows him having travelled from there to Whitehorse in late July 1928. 

According to Dorothy Mackintosh, Beauchamp sold the roadhouse to two men who intended to raise mink and engage in fur trading with the First Nations people.  Correspondence in one of Beauchamp’s land files indicates that by July 1930 he had sold his Bear Creek buildings to an L.F. Larson, who may have been one of the two men.  This deal apparently did not work out and within a year Beauchamp went back to Bear Creek, but Clara would not go with him.  Beauchamp then sold out to Frank Sketch, who owned and operated a trading post at Kloo Lake, about 25 kilometers to the northwest of Bear Creek. 

A government letter in one of Joseph Beauchamp’s land files states that he left the Yukon around 1931.  He evidently returned to Quebec, this time for good.  His wife Clara died in Montreal in 1937 and her death record refers to her as the spouse of Joseph Beauchamp. The following year, at the age of 71, Beauchamp entered into his fourth marriage, this one to 56-year old Dawn (or Aurore) Boivin in Montreal.  Six years later, Beauchamp died and was buried in the cemetery at Ste. Thérèse church in Blainville (northwest part of Montreal), where his birth had been recorded 79 years previously.

Dorothy Mackintosh offered a few comments about Joe Beauchamp in a history of the Bear Creek Roadhouse that she provided to the Whitehorse Star in 1966.  She came to Bear Creek in 1935, a few years after Beauchamp had departed from there and perhaps left the Yukon, so it seems doubtful that she would have met him.  However, her husband George would have known him for about 25 years and it was probably his perspective she was passing along.

Dorothy said that Beauchamp must have been a very hard-working man, noting that he built barns for horses, hay and farm machinery, and that when she arrived at Bear Creek there were seven log buildings besides the house and bunkhouse.  She understood Beauchamp to be a shrewd man, but he “had the name of being strictly honest in his dealings”.  She also said that he was “very close” in these dealings, meaning that he insisted on paying what he owed and being paid what he was owed.

History shows that Joseph Beauchamp built the Bear Creek Roadhouse and trading post into a significant establishment along the Kluane Wagon Road.  He operated it for about 25 years, many of those years with a wife alongside him.  Through this he suffered the deaths of two wives and his only child, as well as the loss of his roadhouse building to fire.  He could not have accomplished what he did without a lot of hard work, perseverance and resilience.

See related story about the next era of the Bear Creek Roadhouse site at The Mackintosh Trading Post

Updated October 5, 2023