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Border
Excerpt - Border
Boundary Dispute Heats Up
… In 1898, the sticky issue of the boundary line between Alaska and Canada arose as the building of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad approached a section of country that the Canadians considered theirs. But quick thinking of a man named Stikine Bill Robinson saved the day for the Americans.
 Waves of prospectors hoping to strike it rich streamed across the White Pass Trail from Alaska into Canada during the late 1890s.
Photo courtesy of University of Washington
Eric A. Hegg Collection, HEG383
At that time, both the Canadians and the Americans claimed the land as far down as tidewater on Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska. Relations between the two had become strained, with the North-West Mounted Police stationed at Skagway and U.S. troops stationed at Camp Dyea at the head of navigation. As the tracks of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad approached the summit of the pass, the tension mounted.
A Canadian guard was pacing a beat there to stop construction, and the railroad men were told they could come no farther, since it was British territory.
Stikine Bill went to the summit as an unofficial ambassador. The story goes that he had a bottle of Scotch whisky in each coat pocket and a box of cigars under each arm. When the guard woke up many hours later, the construction gang was working a mile down the shore of the lake.
The hardest part of the building of that railroad was over when the summit of White Pass was reached on Feb. 20, 1899, but other problems arose along the route.
Some of which were posed by Soapy Smith and his gang.
Their interference was mostly of the nuisance type, such as starting shell games along the trail and attempting to operate liquor and gambling dives near the camps.
 A White Pass and Yukon Railroad train rests at the 2,900-foot level of the Alaska-Canada boundary, 13 miles northeast of Skagway in Southeast Alaska, in 1899.
Photo courtesy of University of Washington
Frank H. Nowell Collection, NOW262
Michael J. Heney, contractor of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, had one strict and simple rule: no liquor allowed in camp.
One of Soapy’s men, however, set up such a tent dive near Camp 3, Rocky Point. Heney ordered him off.
The man refused, saying he had as much right to be there as Heney. And maybe he did.
Heney solves problem
But Heney, like Stikine Bill, was never a man to split hairs over a technicality. He went to the camp foreman, a man by the name of Foy, and pointing to a big overhanging cliff just above the drinking den, told Foy to take the cliff down.
“That rock has got to be out of here by 5 a.m. tomorrow,” Heney said within earshot of Soapy’s cohort.
Early the next morning, Foy sent a crew to place a few sticks of dynamite in the rock cliff. The men reported all ready at 10 minutes to 5 a.m. Five minutes later, Foy sent a man to the tent to rouse the occupant, who refused – with colorful language – to get up so early.
Foy walked into the man’s tent.
“In one minute by this watch I am going to give the order to touch off the time fuse,” Foy said. “It will burn for one minute, and then that rock will arrive here or hereabouts.”
The man in bed told Foy where to go.
But Foy remained calm.
“I’m too busy to go there this morning,” Foy told the fellow. “But you will, unless you jump lively. FIRE!”
Foy used the remaining 60 seconds to retire behind a projecting cliff, where he was joined 10 seconds later by the tent’s owner. Together they witnessed the blast – and the demolition of the tent and its liquor supply.
“That rock is down, sir,” Foy later reported to Heney.
“Where is the man?” Heney asked.
“The last I saw of him he was high tailing down the trail in his red flannels, cursing at every step,” Foy said….
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