The “Barracks”

A history of the Chilkoot Trail
Sourdough Bakery building.

‘The Barracks’ was built in 1921 as a personal residence by Johnny Williams, a section foreman for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway (WPYR).

Johnny couldn’t afford to ship building material on the train and there was no road into Carcross so he relied on local construction materials. With no large trees near the community he used smaller logs and erected them vertically rather than stacking them on top of each other. Logs that were too crooked for the walls were instead used to make the rounded doorways and the veranda. The insides of the walls and the cabin ceiling were covered in canvas. Johnny finished the cabin off with a rounded roof and a quaint porch.

He sold the house to another WPYR employee, Tom Lewis, who lived here in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) then converted it into a detachment office complete with a holding cell for “guests” in the back. In 1959, the RCMP converted it into an office and a barracks for officers posted temporarily to the community for the summer months. In the 1960s the RCMP provided policing services in Carcross for summer months only.

The building was acquired from the RCMP in the mid-1960s by the Matthew Watson family who used it as a rental property then as a warehouse for their store inventory. In 1987 Rhonda Passmore and Brian Twigge renovated it into a craft store to serve the burgeoning seasonal tourist trade. Janice Wotten purchased the property in 1993 and operated it as a gift store. Jamie Toole then bought the building and operated it as the Chilkoot Trail Sourdough Bakery.