Red Onion Saloon, Alaska

The  Red Onion Saloon in Skagway Alaska was established in the late 1800’s during the Alaska Gold Rush Days.  The saloon was establish as a location that the prospestors could visit for a drink and to find shall we say…. social company!  As a brothel,  the ladies would receive  $1.25 per male visitor.  A good wage for a woman back then.  She would work a 12 hour shift in the saloon, and have up to 48 male visitors per shift.  The rumor is that one of the ladies was named Lydia.  She is said to still haunt the saloon today.  In May of 2025 Macomb Paranormal Investigations plans to visit Skagway Alaska and other locations in that state to conduct and film some short paranormal investigations in that area.  Be sure to watch our YouTube channel and subscribe so as to be notifieid when those video go up live.  Do you think Lydia will welcome us?  Stay tuned to find out. 

         

View our YouTube Short on The Red Onion Saloon

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Historic Elmwood Cemetery

     Historic Elmwood Cemetery is one of Detroit Michigan’s oldest cemeteries.  Numerous famous and historical people are buried here .  I even have ancestors buried in in this cemetery.   

     One interesting spot here is Bloody Run Creek.  The Battle of Bloody Run was fought during Pontiac’s War on July 31, 1763, on what now is the site of Elmwood Cemetery in the Eastside Historic Cemetery District of Detroit, Michigan. In an attempt to break Pontiac’s siege of Fort Detroit, about 250 British troops attempted to make a surprise attack on Pontiac’s encampment.  

    In the Spring of 1763, when the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) ended and the French gave up their vast claims in North America, the indigenous nations around the Great Lakes encountered the new policies and colonial rule of the prevailing British. After a century of forming treaties and relationships with French colonists, they found themselves no longer dealing with France but with another, distant European nation that was intent on violently colonizing their land and their culture with an open disdain for Native diplomacy.   

      In May of that year, Odawa Chief Pontiac (Chief Obwandiyag) quietly and secretly organized Native tribes from the Alleghenies to the upper Great Lakes, to rise up against the British army and colonists. Pontiac was able to build a coalition of tribes, organizing across cultures, languages, and political organization, to bring war against the British when the threat of genocide and colonization superseded other political concerns.

One of the deadliest battles in Pontiac’s War (sometimes called “Pontiac’s Rebellion” or “Pontiac’s Conspiracy”) was the five-month siege on Fort Detroit. Chief Pontiac led Ottawas, Ojibwas, Potawatomis, and Hurons in a failed attempt to take the fort that was garrisoned by the English, but they claimed some victory in skirmishes around the Fort when reinforcements were called:

On July 31st, a group of about 260 British soldiers intent on breaking the siege attacked Pontiac’s nearby encampment along the creek. Pontiac’s forces fought off their attackers, killing commanding officer Captain James Dalyell in the process. In reference to the battle’s carnage, Parent’s Creek earned a new name — Bloody Run. Today, much of the stream runs underground, having been incorporated into the sewer system over the years. [Detroit Historical Society]

Despite the Native coalition’s success at the Battle of Bloody Run and elsewhere, like at Fort Michilimackinac, their victories were short-lived. The British claimed victory in 1766 when Pontiac signed a peace treaty with William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs. A Peoria warrior killed him several years later and historians theorize that Pontiac was resented, perhaps as a traitor, among some Native people after capitulating to their enemy.

    Today,  the pond with an underground stream still bubbling up from the depths, as well as some of the creek still run at the location within what is now Historic Elmwood Cemetery.