Arthur C. Pillsbury, Photographer

Arthur Pillsbury riding his bike at White Pass above Skagway, Alaska in winter.

Seattle Public Library, Arthur C. Pillsbury Photographs (115)

As an engineering student at Stanford University, Arthur Pillsbury became interested in photography, and after graduating in 1897, he made his way to Alaska to document the stampede for northern gold. After a short-lived attempt to photograph the Klondike gold rush route from Skagway to the Canadian interior, he retreated and applied to the U.S. Census Bureau for the position of official photographer on a roving commission to document towns, mining camps, and other points of interest along the Yukon River. Pillsbury’s second excursion, this one in 1899, began on Lake Lindeman at the head of the Yukon and ended at Nome on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

The photographs you see here are the ones most relevant to the history of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, beginning with images of Dawson City and ending at Circle City. Pillsbury was traveling alone in a Peterborough canoe piled high with provisions and camera equipment, and he became one of the only photographers take pictures of little-known supply camps like Seventymile (at the mouth of the Seventymile River) and Derwent (near the mouth of Charley River). He also offers rare glimpses of Eagle City, Calico Bluff, and Circle City. These photographs are courtesy of Seattle Public Library, which also offers an online “photograph map” that includes all of Pillsbury’s Far North photography.

 

Seattle Public Library, Arthur C. Pillsbury Photographs

"A.C. Pillsbury, special United States photographer for Alaska, is in San Francisco, having returned to California a few days ago after a stay of many months in the frozen north. He traveled 2,000 miles on the Yukon along in an open boat, starting with 700 pounds of provisions and an elaborate photographic outfit. He also made a side trip of 300 miles on one of the branches of the great Yukon [on the Koyukuk River]. Continuous rains, peculiar to that country, made it necessary to observe the greatest precautions in keeping the photographic plates dry. He obtained many fine views along the Yukon and pictures of Nome City and other mining centers. Many of the pictures were taken with a panoramic camera, and are thirty-six inches long by ten inches wide."
- San Francisco Chronicle, December 31, 1899