Cassiar" photo album

1918-20. Hardcover. Very good +. 41 typewritten text pages, one-sided, interspersed with plates. 27 cm. 31 leaves have 161 illustrations, most labelled. 158 b&w photos, fold-out map, firearms licence and hunting permit. New leather spine and new label with original blue cloth. A bit of discolouration to top front and corners a bit worn. Some wrinkling to cloth on rear. Original spine label attached to front free endpaper. Photo of Telegraph Creek loosening. Signed and dated December 1, 1918 by the author on p. 41.

This album was compiled by Henry Towne Bannon (1867-1950), a U.S. Representative from Ohio for two terms from 1905 to 1909. After his political career ended, he resumed the practice of law and served as a director of three banks. He was also known for his books about local history in Portsmouth, Scioto County, Ohio. On a page inserted before p. 25 he states that he wrote an article in the September 1920 edition of Forest and Stream about the mountain goats and Stone sheep along the Stikine River.

In August-Semptember 1918 he embarked on an extensive hunting trip to Alaska and northern British Columbia, entering the region via Wrangell, Alaska. It was not his first trip, as he had hunted the same area in 1917 (p. 10) but had returned to "secure specimens" of Stone sheep. His travelling companion was Ralph Y. Struble, also of Ohio who he calls "S" throughout the text. Their outfit consisted of members of the Tahltan tribe and a pack train. The text, although mainly about hunting, is not without humour, as Bannon's horse "Coyote" "had the least trail sense of any horse I have ever seen ..." (p. 12) and Bannon himself had little success with his gun: "I confess to some poor shooting due, in the main, to the fact that I am not a good shot ..." (p.25).

Bannon's photos of his trip along the Stikine River provide an excellent view of that wilderness just over 100 years ago. Extraordinary shots include "the last of the war canoes" in Wrangell harbour, totem poles, frontier communities like Telegraph Creek, Big Glacier, wilderness camping, mountain goats perched on cliffs, hunters posing with their "kills," a Russian block house at Sitka, their boat called "Hazel B.," a steamboat called the "Princess Sophia" which was wrecked on its next voyage, etc.

The Cassiar Country or "the Cassiar" in northwestern BC is noted for its 1870s gold rush and the ghost town of Cassiar. Unofficial capital of the district was Laketon which is on Dease Lake in the northeastern portion of Bannon's map. The Cassiar is also remembered for the Collins Telegraph Line, which was expected to be built from San Francisco through BC and Alaska, across the Bering Strait to Russia and ultimately Europe. This project was abandoned when the trans-Atlantic telegraph was built first, making the Collins Line redundant. Still, the surveyors had created a primitive route through the forests and founded the community of Telegraph Creek. Telegraph Line Stations and Telegraph Creek are both pictured in this album.

By the time of Bannon's hunting trip, the gold rushes were over and the Cassiar region was quiet. It was not until the 1940s that the area would become busy again during the building of the Alaska Highway. But the text and photos make a well-documented and engaging account of remote mountain sport.