Eldred Rock - Alaska

On February 5, 1898, eight years before Eldred Rock light was built, the Clara Nevada crept out into storm-tossed Lynn Canal, southbound for Seattle. She was a passenger ship carrying some one hundred passengers, an illegal shipment of dynamite, and more than $100,000 in gold dust from the Klondike. The weary but elated miners never had a chance to spend their golden profits.

Hurricane-force winds, estimated at ninety miles per hour, blasted down the canal that night. A witness on shore related that he saw a ship on fire near Eldred Rock. It was impossible for any craft to reach the stricken ship that night, but a week later the steamer Rustler out of Juneau reported a wreck off Eldred Rock. Only one body was recovered, some forty miles from the site.

Congress responded to the accident by releasing funds for a light station to be built at Eldred Rock. It was completed in 1906.