June 8, 2009

Soap Gang robs Jack Dalton

(Click to enlarge)
Jack Dalton (4th from left) and his Dalton Post

Member, Shellie sent in another great item that she found at the McBride Museum,Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Check out their gallery with 142 photographs from the Klondike gold rush era.

She was kind enough to send me the above photograph link and related text accompanying it, dated June 9, 1898.

Dalton Post was a trading post built in 1895 by Jack Dalton close to the First Nation village of Neska-ta-heen. The North-West Mounted Police also had quarters there. Thompson describes the interior of the trading post in April, 1898 "-the shelves being piled high with calicoes, and ginghams, shoes, hats, tin pans, plates, and cups, while from the roof-beams depended kettles, pails, steel traps, guns and snowshoes." During the summer of 1898, Dalton Post was robbed of several thousand dollars, while Jack Dalton was away on a guiding trip. Members of Soapy Smith's gang, from Skagway, were blamed for the incident.
Gregory Skuce

It currently is not known for certain if any of the Soapy Smith gang were working inside Canadian boundaries. However, it is known that many crimes were laid at Soapy's doorstep in which he could not have possibly been involved with. Hopefully more information will surface.

More information on Jack Dalton

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