He worked as a mail carrier on the Touchwood Hills route, via fort Qu’Appelle and established a homestead in the area.
[2] When the unrest in the Métis community boiled over into Louis Riel's rebellion of 1885, O'Brien took advantage of the conflict.
He sold out his interest in the contracting outfit and moved to Seattle, where, hearing about Alaska gold, he set his sights northward.
He soon saved up enough to start his own trading house with his partner Billie Moran in Fortymile and moved the outfit to Circle City.
[8] O'Brien soon expanded into the production side of the business and started brewing with a whiskey gang.
They ran one of the 31 illegal liquor stills that the North-West Mounted Police recorded in the Yukon Valley in 1894.
O'Brien appears to have abandoned this family when he moved to the Klondike, when gold was famously discovered there.
[4] O'Brien, like many of the professional prospectors in the region, was able to get in before the flood of stampeders and get claims on the rich creeks of Bonanza and Eldorado.
With this cash, he greatly expanded his mercantile operations with Moran under the name Yukon Pioneer Trading Co.[2] With his new found wealth, O'Brien diversified his company into numerous enterprises.
A whole page is taken up by ads for his Yukon Pioneer Trading Co. and for notices that he was selling town lots for Fortymile.
[13] His paper ran into legal trouble numerous times, with allegations that it stole other newspapers stories from the telegraph wires and printed them first.
[14] O'Brien also had some business interests in Dawson City and was listed as the co-proprietor of the Monte Carlo Saloon.
[15] Thomas O'Brien seemingly could not stay away from the business of transport and it was not long before he put his new found wealth into a related scheme.
Dogs were the most reliable draft animal, as they could live off salmon, the most abundant food source in the region.
In 1898, Hill M. Henning took this as an opportunity and applied to the government for concessions needed to support the construction of a tramway.
The legality of this change was challenged and, as the charter was specific to a tramway, he was brought to court and forced to stop collecting tolls.
In 1899, with the help of the influential new law firm McGiverin, Haydon, and Grieg, Ottawa accepted a charter for the Klondike Mines Railway.
The population of Dawson dropped precipitously as stampeders headed north, down the Yukon River to Nome.
Miners who had staked claims on the gold fields were not keen on tracks covering ground they wanted to dig up.
[29] The main contract the company fulfilled was the delivery of cord wood, which powered the steam thawing of permafrost to aid the miners.
Hopes remained of reopening within a few years but in, 1920 cold drip thawing which did not require large quantities of cord wood to melt the permafrost was pioneered, and any future prospects for the company were gone.
Steam beer was made through a method pioneered in California, which was desirable because it did not need ice for production.
Likely, this method was popular because, due to the large number of Americans and the relatively proximity to California, steam beer was a familiar beverage to many.
In 1904, the brewery was selling lager beer at $21 (the value of an ounce of gold at the time) per barrel, $18 per keg, or $3.50 a dozen.
[37] O'Brien served as the president of the Yukon Liberal Association, but switched to support the Conservatives a few years later.
[38] The Yukon Sun newspaper ran an article in 1902 with a petition showing over hundred names supposedly collected over two hours.
His daughter, Margaret Mary, studied at the University of California, Berkeley, never married, and died in San Francisco in 1990.