Dave and Gretta: The Yukon: Dawson City (8.18.24)

We needed another day in Dawson City. It was right out of the Gold Rush of 1898, with gold panning tours, dirt streets with wooden sidewalks, and recitals of Jack London and Robert Service poems and stories. We spent August 18, 2024 in Dawson, and August 17 driving there from Whitehorse. We want to see more!

Our drive north to Dawson City felt like we were headed for the beyond the beyond. Before we arrived in Dawson, there was a cut-off for the Dempster Highway, which led to the Arctic Ocean.

The road sign described the few gas stations and hotels on the two or three day drive, and where the best camping spots were. It was definitely intriguing.

We stayed at the Midnight Sun Hotel.

Our hotel felt like one of the nouveau riche hotels from the Gold Rush, with a lobby filled with chandeliers, an embossed leather ceiling, and photographs on the walls from the Gold Rush era. The period veracity included having no elevator to our second floor rooms. As Dave, 77, and Bernie, 78, dragged our big suitcases up the stairs, they were rescued by a couple in their twenties, who hefted the 50 pound bags upstairs as if they were nothing!

Breakfast was, as usual, at a bakery. I devoured my nanaimo bar, a Canadian specialty. It is named after Nanaimo, a town on Victoria Island, in British Columbia. When I made nanaimo bars back in Salt Lake and offered one to my friend, Robyn Petty, her face lit up. "We ate nanaimo bars when I lived in New Zealand!" she exclaimed. Nanaimo bars have followed British colonists around the world!

Dave and I walked around Dawson City in the early morning. The height of the Gold Rush lasted, in Dawson City, for only two years, and then the city slowly moldered. It feels like a time warp.

We loved this stanza from a Robert Service poem, inscribed on a side of a building. The final words are: "I wanted the gold and I got it--/ Came out with a fortune last fall:/ Yet somehow life's not what I thought/ And somehow the gold isn't all."

We took a walking tour of Dawson City with a guide who has lived in Dawson for 27 years. She wore turn-of-the-20th century dress.

Our guide tried to picture for us the Dawson City of the Gold Rush.

We toured several of the historic buildings, including an original bar. There were dozens of bars in Dawson City, at the height of the Gold Rush.

We also visited the bank that was hurriedly set up, as miners tried to turn their gold dust into cash. We learned that, of the more than 100,000 gold-seekers who set out for the Yukon, only 400 became rich from discovering gold. I read the book, "Yukon," by Pierce Berton, as we traveled, and learned many details about the grand, largely fruitless Gold Rush. The Gold Rush did open up the Yukon for settlement, and present gold-mining is actually a bigger industry for Dawson City than tourism!

We next toured the house of the Commissioner, the Canadian official who presided over the Yukon. The house was built in 1901, as the short-lived Gold Rush began to run down, and was used only until 1916 as a government building. It is now operated as a historical site by Parks Canada.

When it was built, the Commissioner's house was a mega-mansion, by local standards, and was frequented by the city elite and fancy visitors, such as investors in the gold mines.

Our guide explained that this tour was designed, by Parks Canada, to consider the effect of the Gold Rush on the First Nations, as well as the way the Yukon was governed by white Canadians.

First Nations people were moved out of Dawson City, across the river. Some First Nations people got rich, transporting gold-seekers' loads up the Chilkoot and White Passes, at whatever rates the traffic would bear. The First Nations people around Dawson City mostly just lost their homeland. Many have since moved from rural areas back into Dawson City.

The Commissioner entertained in style. "First Nations people didn't get anywhere near this dining room," our guide pointed out.

Our guide played a tape based on actual letters between Charles Constantine, an officer with the Canadian Mounted Police who presided over Dawson City, and Anglican bishop William Bompas. Constantine proposed moving the First Nations people ("the Indians") onto an island, away from Dawson City. Bompas protested that the First Nations people had been mistreated and had lost their homes and fishing and hunting rights. Constantine replied, "Well, bishop, there is no progress without change." Constantine emphasized that his primary obligation was to the white miners.

The museum at the Commissioner's house included First Nations treasures, as well as Anglo ones.

We relaxed at a farmer's market in Dawson. As I remembered from Dave's and my trips to Alaska, fruit and vegetables grown in the North are huge, because of all the summer sunlight. Of course, the summer is short. Already, in mid-August, fall was in the air.

I also browsed at the Dawson Trading Post.

A dog sled hung from the roof, with unique Yukon supplies beneath it. The red boxes in the foreground are berry pickers for small berries, such as native Yukon currants.

There were dog harnesses for sale, as well as rubber boots for prospecting in streams.

We took a tour of a modern gold-mining operation on Hunker Creek, one of the original creeks where gold was mined during the Gold Rush. Our guide was a wiry, lean woman from Argentina who showed us the creek where gold flecks are found, as well as, occasionally, nuggets.

High pressure hoses clean off the "overburden" until "pay dirt" is reached. Then, the orange machine in the photo sorts through the pay dirt to find the gold.

After the big machines do the initial sorting, the final gold extraction is done through small machines like these.

Today's gold miners use pans for finding gold mainly when they are checking out a new location in the creek. Our guide showed us how to use a pan, starting from the "pay dirt" found up the creek. She said that this much gold is worth about $2,000.

Dave and I put on rubber boats, received a pan of "pay dirt," and walked into the stream to pan for gold. Dave found five flecks of gold and I found six. Together, they were worth about $10.

We looked at the nuggets for sale in the gold mine shop.

Our guide showed us what an ounce of gold looks and feels like, compared to an ounce of silver.

We chatted with the wife of the owner of the mine. Her husband had mined this creek for 50 years, bit by bit assembling more and more claims along the creek. The owner and his wife lived in Dawson City for many years, but moved to Whitehorse when their children were teenagers, since it offered better schools and opportunities.