Frontier Freight: Pack Trains of the Skeena
Organization, efficiency, and guaranteed delivery - in many ways, the northern British Columbian packers of the 19th century faced many of the same challenges that confront today's sophisticated freight handlers.

For over half a century, the pack train, composed of up to 150 horses and mules, was a skillfully-orchestrated, highly-organized method of transporting supplies from frontier depots such as Hazelton to the mines and settlements of the remote interior. Gold prospectors who made their way to newly-established claims in places like the Omineca relied on the arrival of the pack trains to supplement their minimal supplies. And at the close of the 1800's, the trains were a welcome sight to the lonely, isolated linesmen of the resurrected Yukon Telegraph who were stationed year-round in remote cabins between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek.

Back-Packing Brawn: Before the advent of horse and mule trains, native packers of remarkable strength and endurance carried enormous loads through hundreds of kilometres of rugged terrain and narrow trails. Men hauled at least 45 kilograms of goods, women carried 35, both adding the weight of their own food, equipment and even babies to their straining backs. In the 1860's, a packer's pay amounted to less than 10 cents a kilogram.

Mexican Import: As demand increased, and trails became wider, clearer and more reliable, mule pack trains based on the Mexican model began to replace human packers in the summer months. Southern-trained operators recruited local crews, teaching them the specialized tricks and techniques of packing.

Chain of Command: Even in the north, Spanish packing terms persisted, with "corrigedor" commanders, "segundo" second-in-commands, and "stevedore" loaders and packers. Most trains featured one packer riding horseback for every 10 horses or mules, and a foreman who rode up and down the train as it moved along. The cook and his helper usually rode ahead, setting up camp and preparing the evening meal in time for the arrival of the rest of the crew.

Organization and hierarchy also extended to the pack animals in the train, with horses and mules receiving careful training in advance. The most reliable animals were chosen to wear the bell of the leader and to negotiate challenging sections of the trail. When assembling a pack train, the packer had to consider the terrain to be covered and the fragility of the goods - mules could carry more weight and work longer hours, but horses were more reliable if the route included stretches of mud, swamps, or water.

Only One Hitch: The key to safe, efficient packing was the legendary "diamond hitch," a roping method that held up to 300 kilograms of goods securely in place. Just as shifting loads can send a modern transport to the ditch, a shifting pack could send a horse or mule tumbling to its death.
As roads and railways replaced horses and mules in the early years of the 20th century, the courage, skill and tenacity of the packers became part of the pioneer lore of northern British Columbia.

Riverboat Route
Though the Skeena River was valued as an important inland water route, the 288 kilometre trip from coastal Port Essington to Hazelton, at the junction of the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, was hardly a leisurely cruise. Hudson's Bay canoe brigades, paddling sturdy, Haida-built cedar craft, encountered strong currents, swirling rapids, deep canyons and sharp bends on their week-long journey to the inland terminus. The river was so swift that the exhausted crews who handed off their freight cargo to waiting pack trains could be comforted by the knowledge that their downriver trip was likely to take no more than a day.

Steamboat Start: Small steamboats appeared briefly on the turbulent river from 1864-1866, hauling supplies for the ill-fated Collins Overland Telegraph. When a transatlantic cable put an end to the ambitious North America-to-Siberia project, the steamboats were retired.

Fifteen years later, in 1891, the Hudson's Bay Company launched a specially-commissioned Skeena sternwheeler known as the Caledonia. At 100 feet in length, she was judged too short to handle well, and was returned to the Victoria shipyards to be lengthened. During the next two decades, the Company operated a succession of sternwheelers between Port Essington and Hazelton, often competing fiercely with private entrepreneurs such as Robert Cunningham, who launched the Hazelton in 1901. Skeena riverboating had become a lucrative business, serving the traders, prospectors, merchants and missionaries that briefly transformed Hazelton into the largest community in northwestern British Columbia.

Custom Craft, Racing Rivalry: The Skeena's steamboating era was dominated by two enduring themes: the race for time to complete the upriver trip, and the adaptation of ship design to the rigors of the river.

To the amusement of onlookers, bitter rivalry between sternwheeler captains led to frequent river tantrums, including the 1902 ramming of the HBC's Mount Royal by Cunningham's Hazelton. But no matter what the skill of the riverboat crews, a steamboat trip up the river took several days and involved considerable risk. At Kitselas Canyon, near present-day Terrace, shore-anchored cables were required to draw the boats through the perilous gorge. Six crew members drowned at the Canyon in 1907 while trying to free the wind-blown Mount Royal from the rocks at Ring Bolt Island.

Each new riverboat introduced to the Skeena was a further attempt to strike the right balance between size and maneuverability. While large, bulky ships could carry a profitable payload, unwieldy vessels could not negotiate the rapids and sandbars of the forbidding river.

The final chapter of Skeena steamboating paralleled the building of the Grand Trunk Railway early in the 20th century. Construction supplies for the railroad were carried up the Skeena by a number of privately-owned steamships. In 1912, the Inlander made the last of the Skeena steamboat runs, guided by the captain who first steered the Caledonia up the river in 1891.

Telegraph Trail
In 1866, when Perry McDonough Collins abandoned his ambitious scheme to establish a transcontinental telegraph connection between North America and Russia, his intrepid crews had already strung thousands of kilometres of line through the wilderness of British Columbia and Alaska. Crushing news of a successful trans-Atlantic cable abruptly terminated the project, leaving the line to disintegrate.

Yukon Revival: But the legacy of the ill-fated Collins Overland Telegraph was not completely lost. When the Canadian federal government decided to complete an overland communications line to Dawson City during the 1898 Klondike gold rush, part of the former route was resurrected. In the Skeena River region, the Yukon Telegraph Line ran down the Bulkley River, crossing the Skeena at Hazelton, then up the Kispiox River into the Yukon.

Lonely Linesmen: The line was operated and maintained by a series of two-man crews, in cabins situated approximately 50 kilometres apart. Each cabin housed an operator, who would relay messages, and a linesman, who was required to walk the trail 25 kilometres north and 25 kilometres south to make sure the telegraph wire was in good condition. Along the route, "refuge" cabins, stocked with emergency supplies, provided shelter from stormy weather.
Telegraph workers relied solely on the annual summertime visit of pack trains to replenish their supplies and bring news of the outside world. For the most remote cabins, that news would already be out of date: it took 6 weeks for packers to make the journey to the last telegraph cabin in the Hazelton region.