Digital Bob Archive

McGann's Marathon. In the first session of the Alaska Territorial Legislature, 1913, the House was short one member. This threw something of a burden on the remaining 15, but they managed. Then, early in 1915 the death of Senator Elwood \"Heinie\" Bruner left only seven senators to carry on the work of that body and a special election was called as quickly as possible to fill the vacancy.

Senator Bruner of Nome had represented the Second Division, and that was a long way from Juneau. The earliest the election could be legally held was on February 27, and the session was required by law to convene at Juneau on March 1. The special election was won by Thomas F. McGann, 47, a miner who was born in Canada and grew up in Buffalo, New York. He had joined the rush to the Klondike in 1898 and had moved to Nome in 1900.

Having won the election, McGann's next problem was to get to Juneau before the session ended. Today there would be no problem, provided he had the price of a ticket, and one day would have sufficed. Not so in 1915. Nome would be locked in ice until close to the first of June. There had been only a few demonstration air flights in Alaska by 1915, so the only practicable mode of travel from Nome to almost anywhere else in the winter was by dog team.

The newspapers of the time are silent on McGann's experience as a dog driver but after making sure that he had been elected, he hitched up a team and started for Juneau on Tuesday morning, March 2. He might have gone by way of Iditarod and Seward, but chose the more traveled route up the Yukon and Tanana Rivers to Fairbanks. He was able to use nine different dog teams, arranged for him by George B. Grigsby of Nome and E. Coke Hill of Ruby.

Hill, himself a noted dog musher, accompanied McGann from Ruby to Fort Gibson and they made 88 miles one day. McGann rested for half a day at Ruby and another half day at Fort Gibbon and arrived at Fairbanks on March 14 after having covered 900 miles in 12 days and 5 hours. It was hailed as a record since the best time of \"Scotty\" Allen, a famed dog racer, was said to have been 17 days.
Allen had, however, driven a single team.

On Monday, March 15, McGann left Fairbanks on Bobby Sheldon's auto for Chitina. Sheldon was advertising the trip in four days, but this time it took six and they arrived at Chitina on Saturday evening. The regular train of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway landed McGann at Cordova on Sunday night, the 21st.

The Alameda was in port but was headed for Valdez and Seward and he had to wait until she returned and loaded 1,100 tons of copper ore before she sailed for Juneau. Finally, at 11:20 p.m. on Friday, March 26, McGann walked down the gangplank at Juneau. He took the oath of office in the Senate Chambers in the Goldstein Building at 10:10 a.m. on March 27.

It would be nice to report that the[ voters, in recognition of McGann's sterling qualities as a musher, returned him to the Senate in 1916. He ran but was defeated. In 1917 he was appointed Clerk of the U.S. District Court at Nome and served in that capacity until 1921. He then moved to Washington State, settling somewhere near Bellevue, and nothing further is known of him.