Joe LaDue - Arriving in Alaska in 1883, Joe LaDue spent many years as a trader, sawmill operator and prospector along the Yukon River. His historical fame is forever linked to this region and the town he founded. Working in a place called Sixtymile, not far from the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, LaDue was in a good position in 1896 - when the gold was discovered. He had platted a flat area of land just below the confluence and began to sell plots of land as the interested miners and shopkeepers arrived. LaDue named his instant township after the Canadian geologist George Mercer Dawson.

   It was in the spring of 1897, when the Yukon River thawed, that the wealthy prospectors left Dawson by steamboat to St. Michael, on the western Alaska coast. In St. Michael they boarded the larger seaworthy ships, the Excelsior and the Portland to sail for San Francisco and Seattle, respectively.

   LaDue chose about the best spot possible for a townsite near the gold fields, but that's not saying much. The mountainous valleys didn't afford much flat land—the best thing Dawson had going for it. Even though it was flat enough for a city, it wasn't particularly habitable—marshland and mosquitos in the summer and floods in the spring when the river was thawing. By late spring of 1898, Dawson had reached a population of 5,000. It was estimated that by August, only a few months later, nearly 100,000 individuals arrived in town. With a mobile and varying population, the town was eventually pinned as having a population of 60,000, and was declared the capitol of the Yukon Territory.