Do You Believe The "jacko" Story?

[Guest]

Sure.Y not.

[Guest LittleFeat]

Parts of the story seem plausible, but it seems to be seriously embellished, which leaves me doubting its authenticity.

[MagniAesir]

Proof.

That's Jacko, second on the left in the hat.

So true LOL

[Huntster]

Hunster

Yale wasn't all that remote, it was the jumping off point of prospectors getting off paddle wheelers.

I live in Alaska, and was here during an era and living in places that were "jumping off points" for prospectors and oil development pioneers, and working for the railroad at that. I can assure you, I was pretty remote, and it was darned lonely and rough out there then, and this was 90 years after the Jacko affair.

Yale, BC was once the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Chicago.

There are lots of ghost towns in Alaska that could make the same claim. They now don't exist, and even at the time, they were remote. Indeed, Anchorage Alaska is the largest city in North America north of Edmonton, Alberta, and I can assure you that just a couple of miles out of town, you can lay down and die, and nobody would ever find you. We have Boone and Crockett qualifying brown bears running around right in town.

Today Yale is about a 2 hour drive from Vancouver (non-rush hour traffic)

At the time, the railway was still under construction. The construction clearly started at the coast, and had just reached Yale at the time of the Jacko affair, so beforehand, it was the end of the riverboat run.

It was right at the edge of the wilderness, at the latter stages of development due to a gold rush, and right at the edge of prime sasquatch habitat.

[Guest]

Huntster, I get that Yale is remote and was a lot more so in the 1880s. I'm just very skeptical that something as amazing as a captive, hairy man-beast - apparently held for some time and seen by many people - went unphotographed. Heck, is there even a "drawing from life"? I'm sure they had paper, charcoal, and somebody who could render a decent portrait in the 1880s.

[Huntster]

Huntster, I get that Yale is remote and was a lot more so in the 1880s. I'm just very skeptical that something as amazing as a captive, hairy man-beast - apparently held for some time and seen by many people - went unphotographed. Heck, is there even a "drawing from life"? I'm sure they had paper, charcoal, and somebody who could render a decent portrait in the 1880s.

While it's unfortunate, I'm not so surprised. Here is a list of why:

1) Again, I think photographers in the region weren't really common in 1884. While the creature must have passed through Victoria on it's way to a ship (and thus past cameras for sure), I think there are other reasons why it may have been "spirited" out of town...........

2) I suspect there was a "struggle" over what to do with the creature, and who was going to be the one to profit from it (this is a gold rush town.......you know what that does to people, their focus, and their morals/ethics?)

3) There was a gang of folks involved in the capture. You know that if the creature was sent "back east" or to London, and costs were being accrued to do it, somebody (or several people) wanted to get paid, and I'm sure that included the gang that captured the creature

4) There may have been greed involved in the reason why the creature didn't get photographed in Victoria on it's way through to the ship.

5) There may have been a schedule crunch between the train, ship, and finding a photographer

6) There may have been a "secrecy" thing going on during shipping in order to avoid crowds

7) The "cage" the creature was shipped in may have been mostly enclosed (not bars that one could easily see/photograph through), and they didn't want to risk letting it escape

The creature may already have been dying from it's capture and treatment, and there was a rush to get it to sale before it died.

In sum, there could be lots of reasons why nobody photographed the creature.

Secondly, and as you should well know, gorillas were extremely difficult to keep alive in captivity. They didn't live long. Jacko (sasquatches) may have been a similar scenario.

(Most people aren't even aware of the difficulty of keeping moose in captivity..............how many of you have seen a live moose in a zoo?...................)

[Guest tracker]

Cameras would of been pretty rare back then in small towns. Anyways why let people take pictures for free when you could make them buy a ticket first? Nothing has changed.

[MagniAesir]

I live in Alaska, and was here during an era and living in places that were "jumping off points" for prospectors and oil development pioneers, and working for the railroad at that. I can assure you, I was pretty remote, and it was darned lonely and rough out there then, and this was 90 years after the Jacko affair.

There are lots of ghost towns in Alaska that could make the same claim. They now don't exist, and even at the time, they were remote. Indeed, Anchorage Alaska is the largest city in North America north of Edmonton, Alberta, and I can assure you that just a couple of miles out of town, you can lay down and die, and nobody would ever find you. We have Boone and Crockett qualifying brown bears running around right in town.

At the time, the railway was still under construction. The construction clearly started at the coast, and had just reached Yale at the time of the Jacko affair, so beforehand, it was the end of the riverboat run.

It was right at the edge of the wilderness, at the latter stages of development due to a gold rush, and right at the edge of prime sasquatch habitat.

Hunster

Yes the area around Yale was wild, but Yale it self had a lot of traffic through it via the paddle wheelers. At one time there where more paddle wheelers traveling between Yale and Vancouver then were on the Mississippi.

My point was and is, given the size of the resident population and the number of people traveling through it during that time, there would be photographers. There was a lot of traffic along the old Caribou trail and the Fraser River

I travel through Yale probably a dozen or more times a year and I am very familiar with our local history.

[Huntster]

My point was and is, given the size of the resident population and the number of people traveling through it during that time, there would be photographers.

Again, while "there would be photographers", there may not have been any in town in July, 1884. And if there were in the area, they were using the cumbersome wet plate photographic technology (which makes a long rail or riverboat run difficult), and they were not likely to have been waiting in Yale for a sasquatch to fall off a cliff in order to photograph it to satisfy 21st Century skeptics. They were likely headed up to the gold fields, or were in Victoria or Vancouver.

There was a lot of traffic along the old Caribou trail and the Fraser River

And while today's prospectors might have a pocket digital camera (and waterproof at that), 1880's era prospectors didn't likely carry wet plate cameras around on the off chance that a sasquatch would fall out of the sky for them.

I travel through Yale probably a dozen or more times a year and I am very familiar with our local history.

I believe you.

So tell me: how many photographs of Yale from the year 1884 have you found? Or even 1883, 1884, and 1885 combined? That ought to be an indication of how many cameras were around then, huh?

Here is one from 1882 during construction of the railroad (and two years before the Jacko affair).

Note the extravagant riverboat dock.........

[MagniAesir]

Haven't looked for photos of Yale outside of looking at ones in their museum.

As you are no doubt aware most photographers of that era in "boom towns" were trying to make money by separating miners from their money by taking their portraits.

I also don't recall seeing drawings or etching of jacko by any of the newspapers of the day, or even local artists,

I am going to have to look around to see if they exist

[Huntster]

As you are no doubt aware most photographers of that era in "boom towns" were trying to make money by separating miners from their money by taking their portraits.

The best way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels.

There were plenty of photos during the Alaskan Gold Rush, but that was 15-20 years after the Jacko affair, and well after photography evolved to dry plate technology. Good thing, too. No railroad. Just steamboats in the summer and dog teams in winter.

So no sasquatches falling onto railroad tracks.

I also don't recall seeing drawings or etching of jacko by any of the newspapers of the day, or even local artists,

I am going to have to look around to see if they exist

If you find one, a skeptic is likely to then allege that Patterson modeled his brilliant red horsehair suit after it.

[MagniAesir]

The best way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels.

There were plenty of photos during the Alaskan Gold Rush, but that was 15-20 years after the Jacko affair, and well after photography evolved to dry plate technology. Good thing, too. No railroad. Just steamboats in the summer and dog teams in winter.

So no sasquatches falling onto railroad tracks.

If you find one, a skeptic is likely to then allege that Patterson modeled his brilliant red horsehair suit after it.

LOL I am a skeptic

[MagniAesir]

Found this by accident.

NAME: Hannington, Ernest B.C.

LIFE DATES:

BIRTHPLACE:

PLACE OF DEATH:

WHERE ACTIVE: Yale.

HOME ADDRESS-YEAR: Yale.

WORK INTERVAL: early 1880s.

STATUS: Amateur.

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY: A physician employed by Andrew Onderdonk during construction of the Port Moody to Eagle Pass section of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Dr. Hannington’s identity as a photographer was uncovered by independent art curator Roger Boulet.

A Charles Francis Hannington (1848-1930), relationship unknown, was employed as a CPR route surveyor and made a trip from Quesnelle through the Rocky Mountains in the winter of 1874-1875. Hannington's account of his journey, in the form of letters to his brother Edward Hannington, were published in the Public Archives of Canada Report of 1887.

COLLECTIONS:

IDENTIFYING MARKS:

REFERENCES: Public Archives of Canada (1887: cx-cxxxii) Mattison (1997b).

[MagniAesir]

The best way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels.

There were plenty of photos during the Alaskan Gold Rush, but that was 15-20 years after the Jacko affair, and well after photography evolved to dry plate technology. Good thing, too. No railroad. Just steamboats in the summer and dog teams in winter.

So no sasquatches falling onto railroad tracks.

If you find one, a skeptic is likely to then allege that Patterson modeled his brilliant red horsehair suit after it.

Hunster

On another note,the circumstances around the jacko story sort of make sense.

The Fraser Canyon at that time was a very rugged area, and there was very little human activity once you got away from the Fraser River.

The railroad was being built through that area during the 1880's, so it would be something that a curious youngster could be attracted to.

You could make an argument that the perfect storm of circumstances could have lined up to have this happen

[MagniAesir]

Indeed, Anchorage Alaska is the largest city in North America north of Edmonton, Alberta,

One of the beauties of Canada is there is "no buggers here"

Our landmass is greater than the USA and we have about 1/10th the population.

I have not looked at our last census but in the 1990's 80% of Canada's population lived within 200 miles of the Canada/USA border.

If you meant remote as in hard to get to I would disagree as Yale is on the edge of the Fraser Valley, but if you meant remote as in nothing around it, then yes you are correct.

We got a lot of empty (of humans)space in this country.

I would think that the only state in the US that is similar in this regards is Alaska

Edited November 19, 2010 by MagniAesir