The place where the Gold Rush town of Bennett stood was a logical stopping place for those travelling to and from the coast long before the Gold Rush. Tagish and Tlingit peoples have travelled and hunted around Bennett for thousands of years, leaving evidence of their passing in fire rings, hunting blinds, and the flakes left from crafting stone tools.
After the brief flurry of the Gold Rush, the people of the First Nations reclaimed the site. Many members of the Carcross-Tagish First Nation spent their summers at Bennett, fishing and earning money from the railway and the tourists. A few lived there year-round, fishing in summer and trapping in winter.
In winter, many women and children sewed and beaded small items for sale to the summer tourists at Bennett. Martha Johnson, a year-round resident, began selling crafts from a table beside the railway station in 1938 and continued to operate a store for many years. Among her best-selling items were postcards she designed herself, showing traditional life around Bennett.
The railway played a major role in the lives of First Nations people near Bennett and Carcross well into the 1950s. Tagish elders say that Skookum Jim Mason gave the railway company permission to cross his land in exchange for an assurance of jobs for his people, a bargain the company kept long after Skookum Jim was gone.
