Dawson City

Dawson City will be the first city that I will write about. I will mainly detail the current state of the city and what made it famous and why it is not the case anymore.

Dawson City owes its existence to the discovery of gold fields in its area. In August 1896, a certain Robert Henderson was prospecting in the area. He met on his way back a group of men led by George Carmack and invited them to have a look. Carmack and his companions discovered what they called “Bonanza” creek and went to claim it in the town of Forty Miles.  This news provoked the birth of the city of Dawson at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. By June 1897 the new town had a population of some 4,000, by June the following year the population had grown to over 25,000. Word of the Klondike gold discovery hit San Francisco and Seattle in July of 1897, prompting people to this new gold field in the Canadian North West. All that winter they had been arriving in Dawson, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1898, when several hundred boats and scows of all description and size left Lake Bennett, as soon as the ice went out of the lake all heading for the Klondike goldfields some 600 mile away down north on the Yukon river. Many of them had a disastrous trip wrecking their boats in the White Horse Rapids, or the Five finger rapids, losing everything, many lost their lives. By mid-summer the new town of Dawson City had a population of some 30,000 people. Everyone looking for an opportunity to stake a claim and go back home with their pockets full of gold.

The Klondike gold rush was characterised by a sudden start and a short span. In addition, the travel that the prospector, people from all walks of life who had left their original activities behind them, had to do was exhausting. Boats of all kinds sailed north out of western port cities (Seattle, Portland), nearly bursting with people, gear and pack animals. This journey was the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of the gold rush. Stampeders were physically unprepared and poorly equipped for the severe northern climate and terrain. Some died and many abandoned the journey. Travellers did not always fare better in the summer. Stampeders struggled in rain, fog, boulders, and bogs. Without its covering of snow and ice, the trail to the summit led over giant boulders over which people literally crawled. For instance, to move one outfit over Chilkoot pass, stampeders packed and cached their goods up to forty times and hiked up to 1,000 miles. The terrain on the last four miles of the trail was too rough for pack animals. Discarded supplies littered the trail as stampeders cast unnecessary items aside. Many took three months to move their goods from Dyea to the summit. Most stampeders felt disappointed when they reached Dawson. Local miners had claimed all the gold-bearing creeks up to a year earlier. Without gold "for the taking," late arrivals milled about town. Many went home. Some found jobs in and around Dawson. People made good wages working another miner’s claim, or in saloons, hotels, and other support positions. Others looked for gold on nearby creeks but rarely found any. The irony of the gold rush was that after risking their lives and fortunes on the journey, most stampeders never struck it rich. About 40,000 people reached the Klondike, only four of every ten who tried.

As for the city of Dawson itself, although this boom town was destroyed by fire on Thanksgiving 1897, it became by 1898 the “Paris of the north”: the biggest city west of Winnipeg and north of San Francisco, with all the amenities of the outside world only 286 km (165 miles) south of the Arctic Circle,. On June 13, 1898, Yukon Territory was formed out of the western part of the Northwest Territories encompassing the Yukon River water shed. The Yukon was governed by Ottawa, with a Commissioner who had his headquarters in Dawson which was now the capital of the new Yukon Territory. Dawson offered entertainments in its elaborate theatres, hotels, saloons and dance halls. Moreover, fine stores were selling all the things that were available in the stores in the rest of Canada and the United States, including the latest fashions from Paris. Four major religious orders erected churches, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic. By 1900 Dawson had electricity, water and sewer, and telephone, and in 1901 was connected by a telegraph system to the rest of the world. However the golden age of Dawson City was short and when gold was found on the beaches of Nome Alaska, in 1899, it was estimated that by spring 8,000 left Dawson for Nome. In 1900 Dawson had a population of 5,400.

By 1903, more than $96 million in gold had been taken out of the creeks. Ten years after the discovery of gold, the rush was over. There were a few millionaires and many who left with unfulfilled dreams. The Klondike Gold Rush is remembered as the greatest adventure of them all. It was a brief, exciting period of history that continues to live through memory and existing reminders of the gold rush period in Dawson City, Whitehorse, Skagway and places in between. By 1960, there were 350 permanent residents and tourism had become a growing focus for Yukoners. The Yukon and Canadian governments realized that Dawson City provided a priceless heritage that should be preserved. Dawson was declared a National Historic Site and the National Parks Service was placed in charge of the restoration of significant Dawson buildings and gold mining sites.

Today Dawson city has been reconverted as a touristic attraction that largely take profit from its history. It is thus possible to visit the house of writer Jack London, who started his career as a gold prospector and ended up writing short stories about his adventures proving that the Klondike gold rush spawned more than dream of gold and riches. It is also possible to come to the first modern licensed gambling casino in Canada: Diamond Teeth Gertie. Gold Prospecting is still going around and it is possible for the neophytes to try out their luck in one of the free claims available such as Claims 6. Dawson City seems to host a lot of events, ranging from the dog sledge race to French Can-Can spectacle, all along the year which is given its size quite unexpected. Dawson City has been saved from History thanks to its interesting past and the desire from the Canadian government to development its attractiveness to tourism. Not to be forgotten is also the spirit of adventure that it conveys thanks to its remote location, the reason of its existence and its beautiful landscapes and faunas which extend on an immense surface.

-Croissant