Robinson Roadhouse
The Robinson Roadhouse is one of the last remaining rest houses, of which 52 alone existed between Dawson and Whitehorse in the Yukon , in the far northwest of Canada . It is on the South Klondike Highway , km 139, on the road that connects Skagway on the Pacific with Dawson, with the southern section leading to Carcross .
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Surname
The roadhouse got its name from William "Stikine Bill" Robinson, who worked on a number of railroad projects, including a failed construction of Glenora in the Stikine River area . He was a foreman on a group on the railroad that led to the Skagway coast , then managed the Red Line Transportation Company . It brought building materials, supplies, and goods from the end of the tracks east to Carcross .
history
Even before the first whites came to the region, the Carcross / Tagish had a main village on the Tagish River .
In 1902 the government of the Yukon Territory had signed a contract with the White Pass and Yukon Railway , which obliged the railway company to build a winter path to Dawson, as well as to build additional paths. Road houses were built every 30 to 40 km along the Overland Trail. Not only travelers who traveled on their own used such roadhouses, but also the post office with its carriages. For this purpose, the railway company maintained up to 275 horses, which were provided with a type of metal shoe in order to find support on the often smooth surface. On particularly cold days, not only did the coachmen wear furs, but some of the horses were also wrapped.
The miners in the Wheaton and Watson district found freight and mail in the Robinson Roadhouse, and the ability to ship their ore onto a ship. The long-used meeting place was in an area where William Grainger and Herman Vance acquired 160 acres on either side of the railroad as a town site in 1906, at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush . The then well-known hotel and restaurant builder and owner Louis Markel built the Gold Hill Roadhouse and Saloon on Graingers Land. In 1909 a "Mrs. Markel ”was in charge of the roadhouse when Charles McConnell became the local postmaster. He came from Prince Edward Island and came to the Yukon when the gold rush started there to work as a transporter on the Stikine Trail , then on the White Pass and Yukon Route during the construction of the railroad.
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After the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway was completed in 1900, a parallel track was built so that the trains did not have to wait for the respective counter train. This made Robinson a flag station , where the train could stop if necessary. The house retained this status until 1983 when the railroad was closed. When the Wheaton gold rush began in 1906, a waiting station was even set up. Various mines, such as on Gold Hill, Carbon Hill (35 km away) or the Tally Ho mine on Mt. Stevens, brought their ore - antimony, gold, silver, lead - to the roadhouse.
At the end of the gold rush, most of them left the territory, so the post office was closed in 1915. Mrs. Markel died in 1917, but McConnell stayed and continued to run the roadhouse. He also ran a sawmill and dug for coal in the district. He also benefited from tourists and hunters whom he brought to their cabins.
Web links
- Robinson Roadhouse , Website Sights and Sites of the Cultural Services Branch of the Department of Tourism & Culture , Whitehorse
Remarks
- ↑ Occasionally km 142 is also mentioned (Polly Evans: Yukon , Bradt Travel Guides, 2010, p. 130).
Coordinates: 60 ° 26 ′ 55.1 ″ N , 134 ° 51 ′ 5 ″ W.