Skip to content

History Hunter: Farewell to a history hunting friend

Sad news about a friend interested in Yukon history offers a chance to look back on good times

I received sad news on Tuesday about a long-time friend who had passed away just after the new year began. His name was Bill Berry. Bill walked into my office in 1987, where I was employed as curator of collections for Parks Canada in Dawson City. Bill was an investment banker from San Francisco, a philanthropist and waterfowl hunting enthusiast. He had questions regarding a relative who had been in the Yukon before the gold rush. Had I heard of him? His name was Clarence Berry, and Bill was his great nephew.

Anybody who has read about the Klondike gold rush has probably heard of Clarence Berry. He was one of the prospectors who made it big on his Eldorado Creek claims when the Klondike was discovered in 1896. I told Bill what I could, and then invited him and his wife, Nella, to join me at my home after work. There was something in one of my books I wanted to read to them.

Later that day, Bill, Nella and travelling friends sat in my living room while I read to them the account from William Ogilvie’s book “Early Days in the Yukon,” and an enduring friendship was formed. It was the section where Ogilvie, a government surveyor, described what happened on the Clarence Berry mining claim. The miners on Bonanza and Eldorado creeks had asked Ogilvie to sort out the confusion arising from the original staking of Bonanza and Eldorado creeks.

It seems that many of the prospectors staked more than the 500 feet (152 metres) of creek bottom that they were allowed by law. The overstaked portion was called a “fraction,” and became open ground once the error was discovered. Clarence Berry had overstaked, and all his digging that first winter took place on the fraction that was open to public staking. Ogilvie related how this issue was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

Over the years, we visited back and forth, exchanged photos and letters related to the Klondike, and to Clarence Berry in particular. Bill was generous and warm of heart. He was one of the first to contact us when our daughter Megan was involved in a serious road accident in 1995. We crossed paths with Bill and Nella at various times in California, Vancouver and Alaska. Then, in 1998, he and I planned a trip up the Fortymile River to explore where the early miners like Clarence (often known as C.J.) sought gold before the Klondike strike.

John Gould, a retired curator of mining technology at Parks Canada in Dawson, joined the adventure. For several days, we journeyed up the Fortymile River as far up as Franklin Gulch, and downriver into the Canadian side of the border, exploring the old cabins and abandoned mine sites, and retracing the steps of Bill’s ancestor.

We negotiated the troubled waters of the Cleghorn Riffles (“riffle” was an understatement if there ever was one) and other rapids, and panned for gold along the way. Each evening, we returned to our guide Larry Taylor’s camp for a delicious meal and a comfortable sleep. This trip became one of the most memorable moments from my time living in Dawson City.

For my part, I was interested in exploring the Fortymile River, the topic of my first book, “Gold at Fortymile Creek.” It gave me shivers to visit the places that I had described in the book.

Clarence Berry is chronicled in two books, “The Bushes and the Berrys,” written by Edna Bush, and more recently, “Beyond Luck,” by Betsy Lumbye (2014). He was a failed fruit farmer from Fresno, California, who decided to venture into the Yukon before the gold rush in hope of making good on his debts. His first season was spent learning how to placer mine on Franklin Gulch, a major tributary of the Fortymile.

Clarence returned to California, where he married his sweetheart, Ethel Bush. Together, in 1896, they returned to the rough log-cabin town of Forty Mile, where Clarence was working in Bill McPhee’s saloon when word of the new discovery of gold on Rabbit Creek reached him. McPhee grubstaked Clarence who poled up the Yukon River to the mouth of the Klondike, and then hiked up Rabbit Creek, now renamed Bonanza, where he was able to stake mining claim number 40 above the Discovery claim.

C.J. exchanged a share in his mining claim with Antone Stander for a share of claim number 6 on Eldorado Creek, and later acquired claims number 4 and 5 as well. On Dec. 6, 1896, Clarence hit the paystreak on his claim. His first pan yielded $50 worth of gold. Today, that same pan would be worth over $11,000! The days of hardship were over for Clarence Berry. Poor when he woke up in the morning, he was a millionaire before he went to bed.

Over the winter of 1896/97, he continued to burrow into the paystreak and by spring had brought a large mound of gold-bearing gravel to the surface, ready to be sluiced in the spring run-off. Unlike many others, Berry did not waste his good fortune on wine, women and song. Instead, he stuck to business. When he and Ethel departed for California the summer of 1897, they took with them $130,000 in gold, more than half of that in the form of big nuggets. Today that gold would be worth more than $30 million.

It is said that Clarence made more than $1.5 million from his Eldorado claims, when gold was valued at $20 a troy ounce. He was among the first to bring in steam equipment to maximize his production. He was the first to use electric lighting to work at night. One day, it is also said, he noticed the steam exhaust from his boiler was thawing the frozen ground. He harnessed the steam by exhausting it through a rubber hose into a gun barrel he shoved into the rock-hard gravel and thereby invented the steam thawing technique to soften the icy paydirt.

Berry was noted for his generosity to his employees and for worthy causes, and he remembered kind acts. When Bill McPhee’s saloon in Fairbanks burned to the ground in 1906, Berry remembered that it was McPhee who stuck out his neck and grubstaked Clarence ten years earlier. C.J. sent a telegram to McPhee, telling him to draw on his account for all the funds necessary to rebuild and get back into business.

Berry moved on to Fairbanks where, starting in 1905, he made another fortune mining on Ester Creek. Later, he moved to the Circle district where he first ran a hydraulic operation, then subsequently imported a dredge. Back in California, his California venture drilled its first oil well, named the Ethel D, in 1910. Good fortune seemed to follow him wherever he went.

Over a century later, Berry Petroleum had produced over 200 million barrels of oil, and Bill Berry was still thankful that his great uncle Clarence gambled on striking it rich in the remote wilderness of the Yukon. And I will always remember the trip we took on the Fortymile River during the centennial of the great gold rush.

Michael Gates was the Yukon’s first Story Laureate from 2020 to 2023. His latest book, “Hollywood in the Klondike,” is now available in Whitehorse stores. You can contact him at msgates@northwestel.net