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Updated: June 7, 2025
After three or four days of such travel, sometimes reaching an old cabin for the night, sometimes pitching the tent, one is rejoiced at the sight of distant mountains and at the intimation they bring that the inexpressible dreariness of the Yukon Flats is nearly past; and presently the trail opens suddenly upon the broad Chandalar.
The Hudson Bay voyageurs are responsible for many names in this part of Alaska, and Chandalar is a corruption of their "Gens de large." The various native tribes received appellations indicating habitats.
The opening up of this route was expected to bring much travel through Beaver, and a town site was staked and many cabins built. But "Chandalar quartz" remains an interesting prospect, and the Chandalar placers have not proved productive, and all but a few of the cabins at "Beaver City" are unoccupied. If "the Chandalar" should ever make good, "Beaver City" will be its river port.
The course lay fifty or sixty miles across country to the Chandalar River, about one hundred miles up that stream, and then across a divide to the South Fork of the Koyukuk, and across another to the Middle Fork, on which Coldfoot is situated.
Indeed, some tribes, such as the Chandalar, lived in their skin tents the year round. Now an ill-ventilated and very commonly overcrowded cabin shelters them most of the year. It is true that the cabins are constantly improving and the standard of living within them is constantly rising. The process is slow, despite all urgings and warnings, and overcrowding and lack of ventilation still prevail.
"Beaver City" owes its existence to quartz prospects in the Chandalar, in which men of money and influence in the East were interested. The Alaska Road Commission had built a trail some years before from the Chandalar diggings out to the Yukon, striking the river at this point, and on the opposite side of the river another trail is projected and "swamped out" direct to Fairbanks.
It is one of the second-rate tributaries of the Yukon, and in general its waters are swift and shallow, not navigable for light-draught steamboats for more than one hundred and fifty miles, save at flood, and not easily navigable at all. It is these swift shallow streams that are so formidable in winter on account of overflow water, and the Chandalar is one of the most dreaded.
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