Fort Cudahy was a trading post established in 1893 by John J. Healy near the junction of the Yukon and Fortymile rivers. Named after John Cudahy, a Chicago meat packer who was one of Healy's financial backers, it was built in competition with Jack McQuesten's trading post in the settlement of Fortymile, directly across the river.
Originally made up of a store and warehouses, Fort Cudahy grew to include a sawmill, a free reading room, a billiard hall, and a row of small log cabins. The first post office in the Yukon Territory opened here in October 1894, using American postage stamps.
Thanks to Fort Cudahy's competition, the prices in the Fortymile area dropped drastically. For example, the price of 100 pounds of flour dropped from $15 in 1891 to $8 in 1893. Fort Cudahy also offered a larger range of goods than McQuesten.
But Fort Cudahy operated very differently. Healy refused to extend the almost unlimited credit to the miners that McQuesten offered. He also refused to sell to McQuesten's regular customers, once throwing out a miner who wanted to buy condensed milk because he had been grubstaked by McQuesten.
Fort Cudahy lasted five years, until 1898 when it was forced out of business by the stampede to the Klondike.
