Jack McQuesten

Leroy Napoleon "Jack" McQuesten (1836–1909) was a pioneer in Alaska and Yukon as an explorer, trader, and prospector; he became known as the "Father of the Yukon." Other nicknames included "Yukon Jack," "Captain Jack," "Golden Rule McQuesten," and "Father of Alaska." Together with partners Arthur Harper and Captain Alfred Mayo, he founded Fort Reliance and a wide network of trading posts in the Yukon, often providing a grubstake to prospectors. He was the most successful financially of the trio, becoming a multi-millionaire by 1898 and buying a large Victorian mansion for his family when they moved about that time to Berkeley, California.

He was the first president of the Alaskan Order of Yukon Pioneers and also belonged to the Yukon Order of Pioneers. He wrote a memoir, Recollections of Leroy N. McQuesten, Life in the Yukon 1871-1885, which was published posthumously in 1952.

Leroy Napoleon McQuesten (called "Jack") was born in 1836 in Litchfield, New Hampshire to a family of Scots-Irish descent. His family moved to Illinois in the 19th-century westward migration, and then to California by the time he was 13. He was there for the gold rush.

McQuesten joined other adventurers in the Yukon, becoming partners with traders Arthur Harper, an immigrant from northern Ireland, and Alfred Mayo, of Irish descent from Bangor, Maine. Together the three founded the trading post of Fort Reliance in the Yukon. Later, Dawson City developed six miles upriver of their post. Their post was such a point of reference, that prospectors both up and downriver named creeks and rivers in reference to their distance from Fort Reliance, as in Sixtymile River and Fortymile River.

McQuesten and his two partners each married native Athabascan women of the Koyukon people, strengthening their ties among the local culture. In 1874 Harper married a young woman he called Jeannine, who had not gone to a mission school and preferred to teach her children traditional ways.

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