My Friends at Andy Whittington's Simpson Hotel

My good friend, Andy Whittington, built this here hotel by himself - well, his brother Bob helped out for a year. Andy went up to Beaver River, his old 1924 trapping and prospecting ground. Spent the winter alone, cutting and whipsawing lumber, then floated it down to Simpson in the Spring.

Got this two-story structure up in a year. There are four 'guest' rooms upstairs, the kitchen, and dining room/dance hall are on the first level, and Andy dug a deep cellar, down thirty feet, below, to store green groceries and things.

Andy's in the kitchen baking his morning bread. You probably heard that he sleeps each night on this here counter - been doing that since the place opened. He spreads an old Buffalo-hide rug his father got after the US Civil War on the top and sleeps on it. The fur is gone in the center, but Andy likes it fine.

Would you like some chewin' tobakkie, Cracker Jacks, Tums, or razor blades - we got just about everything here. We ran out of small change at Simpson, so Andy had these aluminum 25-cent coins struck. We all use them; Andy's word is good all over. When Charlie Hansen took over the Hotel in the '50s, he found bags of them as well as hundreds of dollars in real currency that Andy had put away and forgotten.

Andy's is like a community center at Simpson, just about everyone comes here. On Saturday evenings, we show movies, or push the tables and chairs back for a dance; between Christmas and New Years, the goings-on never stop!"

"There's Poole Field with his daughter at Nahanni Butte. Phoebe was born in '26; she's a beauty.

Poole came around from the Yukon with his wife Mary in 1919. He went into the Klondike as a NWMP recruit in 1898, stampeded to Nome and Fairbanks in 1901, ran a trading post at Ross River, off and on from 1903, and traveled with the Ft. Norman Dene for years.

He's kind of a Native leader hereabouts and the best story teller. Some say he started the Nahanni gold rushes; we're still looking, you know."

"Here is Gus and Mary Kraus. Gus got into some trouble in Chicago at age 18 and left for Canada in 1916.   Tried to homestead in Peace River, then trapped at Lake Bistcho. He came up to Nahanni in '34 to prospect, met Mary at Nahanni Butte in '42.

She's really something - hunts, traps, even does her own photography. They live at the Hot Springs, now.

This picture was taken there around 1950."

From left to right: me, Gus, and Mary

Billy Clark, on the right in the first photo, and second from the right in the second photo, with the funny hair, is from Scotland. He signed with the Hudson's Bay Co. in 1923. He thought they were sending him to Port Simpson in B.C., not here. The gent to his left is our doctor, Truesdell; he's also the Indian Agent and Justice of the Peace. The Doc has a Model-T Ford, drives it up and down our one street, particular' with visitors. I can't recall the names of the young fellas on the left, they work at the HBC  behind them.   On the extreme right is Fenley Hunter.  He mapped the Nahanni and measured the Falls with a sextant for the Geological Survey of Canada.   Fenley visited Simpson after his Nahanni trip in 1928.  He was heading down the Mackenzie."

Their picture was taken in 1955 at Headless Creek in Deadmen Valley."

"Bless my soul, it's Dick Turner. Dick saved my life, you know."

"Whatever could be keeping Andy?

Actually, his real name is Jerome Whittington, the "Andy" is kind of a joke.  He was a U.S. Army cook in the Philippines around 1901, and the Army gave him the middle initial "A" to distinguish him from all the other Jerome Whittington's. So his friends started calling him Andy, and the nickname stuck. "