The Legendary Jack Dalton

WAS HE ALASKA'S GREATEST BACKWOODSMAN AND TRAILBLAZER?

- MICHAEL ENGLEHARD

A Haines woman who'd known John "Jack" Dalton as a frequent guest at her girlhood home described him as "a dapper, well dressed, ladies' man" even at 50. Others dismissed him as a scoundrel. His achievements, however, were undisputed. Skagway's paper, The Daily Alaskan, lauded him as "perhaps the most famous pathfinder" in the Territory. In an 1898 photo, he looks like a good man to have on your side.

Small of stature, with broad shoulders somewhat out of proportion to the rest of his body, Dalton, unrelated to the notorious Dalton brothers, yet a marksman nevertheless, normally went about armed. The Van Dyke beard and thoroughly parted hair added a pinch of respectability to a brawler's round face with high cheekbones and a flat-bridged nose. A fireman aboard a Yukon River sternwheeler deemed him preeminently fit, a square shooter in business, and agreeable, "but a bad hombre to cross or run up against." Dalton thought nothing of snowshoeing 50 miles to a cache in one day, admitting to an appetite afterward. Despite his size, he cut an imposing figure in a black, wide-brimmed hat, suspenders, calf-high moose-skin moccasins, and sporting a Colt holstered high on his hipin a working stiff's, not a gunslinger's, way of packing heat. He cleaned up nicely, donning a suit and loosely knotted necktie.

His zest for roughing it kept him spry long after his Alaska days. The early 1920s found him prospecting for diamonds in British Guyana. He lived moderately wealthy to be 89, and his longtime physician's impression in 1929 would have made a great epitaph: when Dalton was nearing 75, he looked 55, and, if provoked, flared up like the 25-year-old firebrand he'd once been.

The Great Northwoods to the Alaskan Frontier