Belinda Agnes Mulrooney

Belinda was born on May 16, 1872, in Ireland. In 1885, when she was thirteen, she joined her parents in Pennsylvania, making the trans-Atlantic crossing by herself.  In 1887, at seventeen, she went to Philadelphia for two years and lived with a family caring for their infant. Two years later she was off to Chicago and the World’s Fair and began working for herself. By the time Belinda was twenty years old, she was an independent businesswoman who owned her first piece of real estate. She had a building constructed. She sold it and bought a restaurant becoming very knowledgeable about the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and how to manage employees effectively.

Belinda headed for San Francisco when she was twenty-one and rented a building where she put a restaurant on the main floor and a rooming house on the top floor. There was a fire and she lost everything because she had no insurance. Then she went to work on a ship that was going to Alaska where she made herself indispensable, becoming the official stewardess and purchasing agent for families living in Alaska.

In 1897, Belinda went to Seattle to get her outfit ready for the Dyea and the Chilkoot Trails. It was she and her companion who hacked icy steps over the Pass as they made about thirty round trips to get supplies to Lake Bennett. Belinda cooked for a crew of eighteen while the men built the boats. The lake was still frozen so they put the boats on sleds along with the dogs using tarpaulins for sails. After the intimidating rapids, they got to Dawson ahead of the crowd on June 15. Belinda soon picked an out-of-the-way place for her tent. They took the boats apart and built a cabin where she protected the crew’s belongings and she was in business!

Belinda set up a store using a gold scale and gold dust for payments. She opened one of her many restaurants. Her partner was Mrs. Geise, whose husband, Julius, was a tinsmith. He fashioned a stove for the kitchen that was open twenty-four hours a day. Belinda then built cabins and furnished them; some cabins came with a doghouse. At twenty-five years of age in the summer and fall of 1897, Belinda helped to create Dawson. She was involved in many businesses at the same time. However, she wanted to create a town of her own.

Bonanza Creek was where Belinda staked a claim on a flat piece of land and built a two-storey hotel, about 16 feet by 32 feet. It was finished in mid-August and she called it “The Grand Forks Hotel.” The main floor was a restaurant and a bar—no gaming tables. The upstairs was a tier of bunks. She ran a mining brokerage business, a sawmill, an informal bank, and a sort-of-trading post. Belinda was one of the founders of the Yukon Telegraph and Telephone Syndicate. She grubstaked prospectors and staked her own claims, including Gold Hill. By the spring of 1898, Belinda Mulrooney was one of the wealthiest women in the Klondike.

Belinda built a beautiful three-storey hotel in Dawson. The walls were doubled. Sawdust was put in between the walls and they used wooden pegs when they ran out of nails. The tinsmith, Julius Geise, made a heating plant from a coal oil tank. The Fairview opened for business on July 27, 1898. Another success for Belinda!  Next was a bathhouse on the river. Belinda was only twenty-six and had become an acknowledged winner—the “Dawson Queen” as she was called.

Belinda made a trip to Skagway before the railway was constructed. She bought everything she could, then headed back up with packers to Bennett to get the boats that were being built for her and her crew to get back to Dawson with her supplies before winter set in. Once again the awful rapids! They shot through three boats at a time and were back in Dawson by September 27.

Belinda was delighted to see how the town had grown in just four weeks including the addition to her hotel. 1897 and 1898 were Belinda’s best years. She was even accepted as an honorary member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. She was a big supporter of events and benefits. She was part of the Yukon Hygeia Water Supply Company bringing clean water to Dawson. Belinda went to Skagway in February 1899 as an invited guest of contractor Michell J. Heney to be on the first train ride to the summit of White Pass.

Count Charles Eugene Carbonneau came into Belinda’s life. He said he was a wine representative of a well-known French wine merchandiser. He purchased four claims for a group of investors in London, England, and was a promoter. Belinda found Charles to be very interesting and they would have dinner together whenever he was in town. They were similar in some ways; however, she used her own money for investments and Charles used other people’s money. They were married in the fall of 1900 but it was not a “happy ever after marriage.” Belinda was wiped out financially in the Yukon. By 1905, Belinda had freed herself of all legal entanglements with Charles and headed to Fairbanks, Alaska, with two of her sisters where she went into the banking business, Dome City Bank.

By 1908, Belinda had disposed of her assets in Alaska and had purchased farm land in Yakima, Washington. The farmland was about twenty acres where Belinda constructed a home completed in 1909. She had a big orchard and sold the fruit by train car load in Los Angeles and New York. She cared for her family members, housing and educating them. By the 1920s, the orchard business was not doing well. She rented out her beautiful house, the “Carbonneau Castle” as it was known.

In 1924, Belinda and her family moved to a smaller house in Seattle. She built a small house on the property to rent out. During the depression years she was a seamstress for the Works Project Administration. She contributed to the war effort at Associated Ship Builders in Seattle and continued to work after the war in shipyards. In 1946, Belinda was seventy-four and still very independent.

At the age of eight-five, she moved to Mount St. Vincent Nursing Home across the street from her home. Belinda died on September 3, 1967, at the age of ninety-five years. She was frail but mentally alert. She died of pneumonia after falling out of bed and fracturing her hip.

Belinda Mulrooney Carbonneau had accomplished so much in her lifetime.

She was a true pioneer of the Yukon and Alaska. She was the first stewardess on a ship, a purchasing agent for Native American and Caucasian families in Southeast Alaska, a builder of restaurants, cabins, hotels and castles. She helped to develop the telephone and water services in these towns and founded investment companies. She was a gold prospector, miner, and managed one of the largest mining companies in the Klondike. She founded and managed a bank and became a fruit grower and promoter of Washington state agriculture. During the war years she contributed by helping to build ships. She supported and educated her family. Despite all of these accomplishments and vocations on her death certificate, Belinda is described as a housewife, the one occupation she unremittingly avoided.