Kinney Bridge, located one mile north of Dyea, marked the official northern end of the Dyea town site and replaced the originally ferry crossing used by the stampeders heading north. Before the Klondike Gold Rush and Kinney Bridge, Alaskan Natives and early prospectors either hiked up the frozen bed of the Taiya River or waded across the river. By the spring of 1896, Sam Herron the manager of Healy and Wilson’s Trading Post, improved the trail’s condition all the way to Sheep Camp, and apparently had also constructed a bridge at the Kinney Bridge site. A later land claim reported that Healy and Wilson identified a bridge constructed before 1896 at the location of Kinney Bridge. During the spring of 1897, the bridge washed out and was mostly
