For the week of November 19 - 24, 2003

Historian to read
from ‘The Mad
Trapper of Rat River’

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Yukon historian and author Dick North has revamped his 1972 book "The Mad Trapper of Rat River" into a new tome of the same name. The story involves one of the most notorious manhunts in Canada’s history.

A strange loner was spotted many times in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the remote Yukon Territory. The name he went by, Albert Johnson, turned out to be one of three aliases that he was known by. In late December 1931, Johnson wounded a Royal Canadian Mountie, who had come by his cabin for routine questioning. Johnson fled into the wilderness. In confrontation in January 1932, he killed a another Mountie. The chase was on and did not end for another 48 days in a shoot-out in Eagle River.

Over the past four decades, North, the author of several works of nonfiction, has researched the identity of Albert Johnson. Convinced he had solved the mystery of the Mad Trapper’s real identity, North wrote "Trackdown," in 1989.

"That went through many printings," North said from his home in Mackay, Idaho. "Then I got all the rights back and put the two books together. They got their man but didn’t know who he was."

North, who lived part time in Ketchum from 1977 to 1982, will be at Chapter One on Saturday, Nov. 29, from 4 to 6 p.m. for a book signing of the new and expanded "The Mad Trapper of Rat River."

"I spent 35 years working on it," North said. "It was like a hobby, a kind of fun thing for me to do, I just kept picking away at it."

North has a home in the Yukon Territory where he runs the Jack London Museum in Dawson City. His journey there began when he worked in 1963 at the Las Vegas Review Journal as the editorial page editor. The owner of that paper also ran a newspaper in Juneau, Alaska, and hired him to take over covering state politics.

"The state was four years old when I covered the statehouse," he recalled. "I was in the governor’s office during the earthquake in 1964. It was Good Friday." The earthquake was the second largest earthquake ever recorded in North America, and remains Alaska’s most devastating disaster.

"I was with that paper until 1966, then covered the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam," North said. He then worked for the Yukon’s daily newspaper.

While there he took an interest in author Jack London’s tales of the Northwest Territory. London was a veteran of the Klondike gold rush of 1897-98, and had lived in a cabin, which was lost to history.

"In late 1965 I searched for Jack London’s cabin. I’d read Jack London but wasn’t a rabid fan. The more I read the more impressed I was. I hired an Indian as a guide and went 100 miles up Henderson Creek."

He led the small dogsled expedition from Dawson City in April 1965 and found the cabin on the north fork of Henderson Creek. The cabin was eventually moved to Oakland, Calif., London’s hometown.

"I’ve written a book on that called ‘Cabin Fever,’ if it gets published."

North’s obsessive attention to detail and solving the mystery of the Mad Trapper has resulted in an adventure story that while true has aspects of the incredible.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.