Albert J. Goddard, who owned and gave name to steamboat A. J. Goddard, was a Seattle businessman who owned a foundry and had expertise in fabrication and steam engineering. When the Klondike Gold Rush started he saw an opportunity to make a profit by transporting prospectors. He intended to supply them with a river boat on upper Yukon and bought parts for two small prefabricated steamboats from San Francisco which were transported north in pieces to Lake Bennett where they were reassembled by new company The Upper Yukon Company. They used the White Pass Trail or a combination of this and the parallel Chilkoot Trail and they arrived at Bennett Lake by March 1898. Thousands of men and women were camped at the lake, waiting for the ice to go out, building boats and rafts. Over the course of weeks the company assembled two 16-metre steel sternwheelers on the shores of the lake. The A.J. Goddard was completed first, followed by the F.H. Kilbourne.