0 On the Road: Skagway

by Willy Vinton
© Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum

Photo courtesy of Candy Waugaman

I just returned from a quick trip to Skagway, where Bobby Sheldon built Alaska's first automobile and Martin Itjen operated his historic street car tour business.

Skagway is a quaint little town that sits on the water at the head of Taiya Inlet. Getting there from Fairbanks isn't easy. One either drives 1.5 days, passing through Canada en route, or flies to Juneau and then hops onto a ferry or small plane for a ride north up Lynn Canal. I opted for the latter.

I have to say that upon arriving in Skagway via Seaplanes Alaska, I have not been that cold in a good many years. It was 27 F with a 35 mph wind blowing from the northeast, right down the streets like a wind tunnel. It felt like I was in Prudhoe Bay!

Photo courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush
National Park, Rapuzzi Collection

To warm up, I went and examined the Martin Itjen "Street Car #1" for the National Park Service. The bus has a lot of history and character about it, and is in need of some work to preserve it for the long-term.

The street car is an interesting blend of parts. It sits on a 1908 Packard chassis, and the rear part of the body is from a horse-drawn omnibus. The current engine is a 1919 Dodge 4-cylinder with a 3-speed transmission coupled to the Packard differential. A lot of additions were made to this unique vehicle, which I will write about in a future post.

Photo courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush
National Park, Rapuzzi Collection

It would be nice to know the history of the Packard that Itjen used in this street car. We would also love to know the history of the Veerac truck (at right) that he used in an earlier rendition of Street Car #1, which also carried the omnibus body.

Skagway is a neat place to visit if you have not been there, but I would recommend that you go during the summer and avoid that nasty wind.


Coming to Fairbanks to see the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum and other area attractions? Support the museum by staying right here at Wedgewood Resort. All guests receive half-price admission to the museum!

Detail: On the Road: Skagway

0 The Abbott-Detroit Bull Dog

 by Nancy DeWitt
© Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum

William B. Norton Photographs, P226-099
Alaska State Library

When I began working with the Fountainhead Museum during its development stage, one of my first tasks was to research which automobiles were the first to reach Alaska. I found the intriguing photo at right in the digital archives of the Alaska State Library. It is labeled "Chas. C. Percival. Skagway, Alaska. Enroute 100,000 mile durability run. The Abbot-Detroit Bull Dog." I had never heard of an Abbott-Detroit before, and was curious to know why it was in Skagway in 1911. It turns out it was in Alaska during a famous publicity stunt.

1912 Abbott-Detroit, courtesy of ConceptCarz.com

The Abbott-Detroit was a luxury automobile produced in Detroit from 1909-1916. Most were powered by Continental four or six-cylinder engines (a few carried eight-cylinder Herschell-Spillmans), considered by many to be the most durable engines of the time. Indeed, the company advertised that "Durability...stands out pre-eminently as a designating characteristic of all Abbott-Detroit cars." To prove this point, Abbott-Detroits were entered in numerous endurance contests, most notably Charles Percival's cross-continent adventure in the car above, nicknamed the "Bull Dog."

Percival was a journalist who "combined the chest-thumping machismo epitomized by Theodore Roosevelt's hunts in Africa and South America with an enthusiasm for the quickly emerging, fast-changing, and experimental technology of the early automobile." (Ducker 1999) The Abbott Motor Car Company had recruited him to drive a 1910 Model "30" stock touring car around the continent until 100,000 miles had been logged. The ambitious plan included a trip to Alaska, where Percival hoped to become the first person to drive an automobile from Skagway to Dawson City. He wrote a colorful account of his northern adventure in a book titled The Trail of the Bull-Dog.

Percival and his mechanic/driver, George Brown, arrived in Skagway via steamship in late September of 1911, where he proclaimed (incorrectly) that "The Bull Dog was the first automobile ever in Skagway."  After giving rides to many of the townspeople, they departed a few days later with Mr. J.J. Chambers of Skagway as an observer. Percival had hoped to cross the White Pass on snow, with runners on the Bull Dog's front wheels and spiked tires on the rear, but they had arrived too early for snow. Instead, they received permission to drive on the narrow-gauge railroad to get over the pass. The bumpy ride included crossing the 297' high steel bridge over Dead Horse Gulch, which they did at a brisk 15 mph in heavy fog.


It was a difficult trip. Between Lake Bennett and Caribou, Percival and Chambers walked alongside the car, laying down planks to cross bridges and culverts where the railroad ties were widely spaced. From Whitehorse to Carmacks they had to build corduroy sections to get across muddy portions of the old government trail. The unfrozen Yukon River prevented them from traveling beyond Carmacks, so they were forced to turn around. Despite their failure to reach Dawson, Percival and Brown were presented with a trophy from the Daily Alaskan for being the first to drive an automobile from Skagway to the Yukon River over the White Pass. While sailing south, the Bull Dog was supposed to become the first automobile to drive the streets of Juneau, but it never left the ship while docked there.

Percival logged only 50,000 miles on his journey, but that did not dissuade the Abbot Motor Car Company from boasting of the Bull Dog's feat. Sales did well, and in 1916 the company moved its operations from Detroit to a larger factory in Cleveland and renamed its cars Abbotts. As with many auto manufacturers of the time, this proved to be the company's undoing. Overextended, the company was bankrupt by 1918.

This is just one of the 80 or so large photographs from Alaska's pioneer days that we have on display. Be sure to budget an extra hour in the museum if you want to see them all and read their captions!

Sources:
Ducker, James H. 1999. An Auto in the Wilderness. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 90(2): 77-88.
Percival, Charles C. 1912. The Trail of the Bull-Dog. American Chauffeur Publishing Co., Cincinnati, OH.

Detail: The Abbott-Detroit Bull Dog

0 The Skagway Street Cars

by Nancy DeWitt
© Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum

Courtesy of Candy Waugaman

Alaska's automotive history is full of colorful characters, most notably Robert Sheldon. Skagway pioneer Martin Itjen, however, surely deserves to be among the top five. Itjen was born in Dorum, Germany and came to Skagway by way of Florida for the Klondike gold rush in 1898. After unsuccessful attempts at prospecting and then working for the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, he started an undertaking business. In his spare time he ran Skagway's first hack, which doubled as a taxi and coal delivery service.

Itjen was also Skagway's Ford Dealer and worked as a boat builder, boarding house keeper, and sawmill operator. It's possible that Itjen's first automobile was the Veerac light delivery truck pictured at right. In one of his tour books he claimed it was the "first gasoline car in Skagway," even though Sheldon's runabout predated it by several years. This truck probably helped inspire Itjen to expand his hack service, and around 1923 he built a "street car" from a Packard and began giving tours of the gold rush town. Well-known for his enthusiastic stories about Skagway and its characters, Itjen was also described as a warm, humble and inventive man with a knack for poetry.

Courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush NHP, Rapuzzi Collection

For 50 cents, Itjen provided a two-hour tour of Skagway's points of interest, including the wharf where Soapy Smith was shot to death. He built up to four street cars. One had an effigy of Soapy Smith that saluted on command and blew the bus exhaust out his cigar. Another had a growling, animatronic bear mounted on front that signaled with the appropriate paw when the bus turned (you can see a video of it in our museum).

Courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush NHP,
Rapuzzi Collection

In 1935, Itjen took one of his buses to Hollywood as a publicity stunt to promote Skagway tourism. He boldly called on Mae West to "come up and visit me sometime," and she did! Photos of the pair appeared in more than 200 newspapers around the country, and Itjen paid for his entire trip from selling postcards of them together. Itjen continued to run a street car in Skagway until the onset of Word War II forced him to shut down the business in 1941. He died the following year.

Courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush NHP,
Rapuzzi Collection

Itjen collected numerous Alaska artifacts and passed these on to his good friend and fellow collector, George Rapuzzi (shown at right with Street Car #1). In 2007, the Rasmuson Foundation purchased the Rapuzzi collection and donated it to the Municipality of Skagway. The Skagway Museum and Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park have been carefully inventorying the collection ever since. In October they identified a 1908 Packard engine as belonging to Street Car #1, which is also in their collection.

Martin Itjen may be long gone, but his legacy lives on through the current Skagway Street Car Tour. If you're ever in Skagway, don't miss it!

Martin with his streetcar for a fifty cent fare

Will show you when and show you where

The High Spots were, for he was there.

He'll start at nine and takes till noon

To show you Skagway in the Klondike boom.

If you miss this, you have missed it all

And have not seen Alaska at all.

Take a bite if you can't take it all.

Street Car #2 (built on a Ford chassis)

Detail: The Skagway Street Cars