The Caribou Sun – Yukon, George Swinehart, 1898

The Caribou Sun was the first newspaper printed in the Yukon. The conditions under which it was printed can only best be described as ‘challenging’. Below is an introduction written by George Swinehart for the first and only issue of The Caribou Sun.

"In making our debut at Caribou Crossing we have not the slightest apology to offer. To put together a power press and complete printing plant all of which had been taken apart in every detail and shipped direct from the foundry, prepare the paper stock and publish a paper, however small, in the wilderness of the Artic regions alongside a trail where only a few tents and not a single wooden structure mark the spot; where a few score people have their temporary abiding place but where in three weeks hence not a single white man will be encamped, is an undertaking never before accomplished and which can be appreciated only by those who have had such an experience, and we believe those very few indeed. It is an issue which will be followed up the Yukon Midnight Sun and is the first paper published in the Yukon Valley the great auriferous field in which its publisher has chosen to labor. Viewing the issue from the facts as above set forth we the public to judge as to its merits."

George Swinehart was a well-known and established newspaperman, serving as both editor and publisher of the Juneau Mining Record in Juneau, Alaska. The discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 sparked the Klondike Gold Rush, which lasted from 1897 to 1899. In the spring of 1898, George and his brother William joined thousands of other prospectors making their way along the infamous Chilkoot Trail. They reached Caribou Crossing (now Carcross) but were halted by thick ice covering the lakes. Forced to wait for the ice to clear, they remained there until conditions allowed them to continue.

George had brought his printing equipment and on May 16, 1898, while waiting with others, Swinehart set up his press and began printing the Caribou Sun. The newspaper included news items gathered from the personal letters of those waiting alongside him. 

Dr. Luella Day McConnell, a medical practitioner from Chicago who settled in Dawson in 1898, offers her personal take on that time in her book The Tragedy of the Yukon: This Book of Travels Gives the True Facts of What Took Place in the Goldfields Under British Rule, published in 1906. Dr. McConnell, who became known as Diamond Lil—a name later immortalized by Mae West in her legendary 1928 play Diamond Lil—was captivated by the Gold Rush. Although many legends were created during those years, and there is no historical proof of Day’s account, she states in her book that she purchased the very first copy of the newspaper.

“…when a printer named Swinehart, from some Canadian town, had set up on the ice, under canvas, a hand-press and font of type. It was newsy and whatever news came into camp was handed him by the recipients of letters and so the whole company had the benefit of the various items of impersonal gossip from the East. I bought the first copy and stood by the press and saw it come off, paying 25 cents for it. This being the first paper published in the Yukon, the editor, proprietor, compositor and proof-reader took my quarter, the first he received, and set it in a mortise in the feed-bed of the press.”

A month later, on June 11, 1898, Swinehart reached Dawson City and began publishing the Yukon Midnight Sun, which he continued to print until its closure in 1906.