After attending to business, it was time to get out in Dawson City and have some fun! In my wanderings around town, I'd stopped by some of the sights, but it was time to get up close and personal and really explore!
 |
| What happens to unstabilized buildings on permafrost |
 |
| Gold Dredge #4: tailings would be spat out the silver bullet on the left |
Mornin' in the diggin's
One of the things I hadn't realized is that the Klondike, and indeed much of the country I've been through in the past few days, is still actively mined. There is a LOT of gold here. Hard work to extract it, but it's here and people are making a living at it.
Gold extraction was first done with pick, shovel, and gold pan. When a likely spot was decided upon (by the "color" in the pan), a miner would set up a "long tom" or sluice box and rocker, shovel dirt into it, and then let the stream water carry off the lighter particles. Gold, being heavy, sank to the bottom between the "riffles" to be removed later.
 |
| Mountains of tailings from the big dredges |
The more material a miner could move, the more gold he could extract.
During the cold winters when streams weren't running, the miners would dig in the frozen ground (painfully and slowly, first setting fires on the ground to melt the permafrost, and later using steam) to dig it out so the loose soil could be worked in the sluices in the spring. It was all about moving quantity.
As the day of the lone miner came and went, placer mining went corporate and mechanized with HUGE dredges. The size of these things is jaw-dropping. They moved massive amounts of material, dredging creek bottoms of dirt, gravel and rocks, pulling it up and dumping it into huge automated sluices, sucking up river water to separate the debris from the gold, and then moving the unwanted material out as tailings that wove back and forth along the creekbeds, looking like giant worm castings.
 |
| Mining today, with backhoe and small-scale separator. |
There wasn't enough river water to satisfy the thirst of these giants, so the mining conglomerates built a 70-mile-long waterway (flume, ditch and pipeline) called the "
Yukon Ditch" from the Tombstone Mountains so they'd have enough water for the dredges.
Of course all this couldn't be done today because of environmental impacts!
Today, miners have to get permits, use settling ponds, and restore the land to some semblance of its former appearance when they are done.
 |
| Ogilvie Mountains in the rain |
Most of the mining activity I saw on this exploration utilized a backhoe to load soil into a separator that pumped water from a settling pond. In the picture above, there is a rotating drum that shakes the slurry of soil, rock, gold and water, allowing the gold to fall to the bottom trays for further cleaning. It seems fairly efficient, but when you think about all the costs involved, it's got to be an expensive proposition.
The Ogilvie mountains here are rolling, spruce-covered hills; nothing to get excited about. The excitement is in the gold in the ground... And meeting one of the big trucks coming around a rain-slicked potholed road!
 |
| Gold discovery site on Bonanza Creek |
There is a trail one can take from the Klondike river up through the gold country to the "dome" where the view would have been marvelous, except that... yes, it was raining.
The geology of the Klondike area, and the question of where the gold came from still has people looking for the "mother lode." From what I have heard, the gold deposits are in old riverbed gravels that are actually on the "benches" above the rivers. There is no mother lode, because the mountains that had the gold in them (that eroded into these gravels) are long gone. At least that's my take on it, but gold becomes its own myth, and people still search for it.
 |
| Dawson City street scene |
Afternoon in Dawson City
Parks Canada offers walking tours and other events around town, and I highly recommend them. The Parks pass that I bought back in Waterton Lakes is paying off now, as all of the tours were free with my pass!
The tours allow you to get inside the buildings, and this sounds like an inside scoop until one realizes that there hasn't been a lot of money for staff or for renovations for buildings that are only visited a few months of the year. The historic buildings have been
stabilized, but for the most part (except for the Red Feather Saloon) they have not been restored to their former glory. I'm sure a lot of people would LIKE to see them restored, but of course it takes money.
They do have a LOT of artifacts, however, since when the gold rush was over, people just up and left everything. It was too expensive to ship out the printing presses, machinery, and flotsam and jetsam of people's lives.
 |
| Dawson City Post Office (historical) |
The "Behind the Scenes" tour took us into the Post Office, newspaper building, mortuary, and archives. Since this tour included up close and personal examination of artifacts, we all donned white cotton gloves, so that if we handled anything, we wouldn't get our body oils on them. We looked for all the world like a party of amateur mimes walking down the streets of Dawson.
Dawson, I must say, is used to the unusual — no one gave us a second look!
The Post Office (1900-1901)
With it's octagonal turret, the historic Dawson City
Post Office is an imposing building just across from the Palace Theater. As one man asked, "Why is it so
big?" Came the reply, "There were 30,000 people here, with packages that had to be stored for their owners while they were mining or otherwise in the bush. It had to be big!"
Unfortunately, by the time it actually was built (1900-1901), the boom was over, and Dawson City was settling down. Perhaps this is why it actually survived, since there were fires that raged through the town in 1897, 1898, and again in 1899.
 |
| Post office interior |
It's a beautiful building inside, thought and they have actually not done significant restoration on the building interior itself. The elegant, rich-looking Douglas fir paneling and molding was shipped in from Portland, and it gleams like amber honey. There is stately detail work on the walls, and all 1,000 post boxes are original.
There are some exhibits here — a "girly" calendar above the clerk's desk, pens, posters hearkening back to the time, and lots of reproduction letters and packages, painstakingly hand-addressed using quill pens. Even the light bulbs are close renditions of what they would have had. (And yes, we were kind of surprised that Dawson City — the "Paris of the North" — actually had electricity in 1900, the first Canadian city to have it!)
The current post office (also downtown — remember this is a working town) has none of the flair, but is considerably more efficient to heat in the winter!
 |
| Inside the news building |
Newspaper building
To a community that was cut off from pretty much ANY news for 6-8 months of the year, news was important.
There are stories about how people paid $5 for the newspaper that bacon was wrapped in, just for the pleasure of getting a bit of really greasy news! In fact, the town supported
twelve newspapers at one time, among them the Dawson Daily News, the Yukon Sun, Yukon World, and Klondike Nugget.
 |
| Working "lightning" press |
The Dawson Daily News building is a
Recognized Federal Heritage Building that to the casual observer might not seem that special, but inside there are several different kinds of printing presses. One of the presses — a "lightning" press, used for small jobs like handbills and posters — actually does work, operated by a foot-operated treadle, and they are working on getting the other presses running as well (driven by steam).
When our interpreter demonstrated the machine, I admit there is a bit of a romance about hearing the smooth, clackety-clack of the gears turning, and the inker turning so that the type was evenly printed. The printer would have to have had a good deal of coordination to work the treadle with his feet, feed in paper to be printed and remove the finished sheets.
In the back of the building is a temperature- and air-controlled room with artifacts that are made from wood rather than metal, like boxes and drawers of type, desks, and more.
It is so easy to create print now, that we forget back then everything had to be hand-set, justified and then composited onto a page. Labor intensive, but then, better than hand-copying! What revolutions there have been in communications!
 |
| Type in a type tray |
Google has some of these newspapers digitized, including the
Yukon Sun and
Yukon World, if you're interested in history, they make for interesting reading from a primary source that you can peruse from the comfort of your own home computer.
The Archives
 |
| Archives (note our white gloves)! |
We were also allowed in one of the archival temperature and air-controlled buildings. The structure was like something out of the last scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" — rows and rows of shelving with boxes of documents, tagged artifacts, rolls of cloth, flags, gloves, parasols, cans, boxes, containers, cartons, picks, instruments, shoes... it was pretty overwhelming.
Our interpreter, Rachel, passed around a box containing items that had been found (together) in one of the buildings, and she asked each of us describe one of the objects in the box as it made its way around our group of 15. There was lip balm, Vaseline, rouge, hair grease (at this point people were thinking... barber! hairdresser!), but then came "eye and lip cement," which did't seem quite right for someone of that profession. Turns out all these items were found in the mortuary, which we visited later.
Rachel mentioned that it was important that everything about an item be recorded: when and where it was found, what other things it was found with, even who found it and any other notes as to it's condition.
I know from personal experience that this is important. Sometimes we don't know the significance of an item until we find something else later, and then can make a connection. For instance, after my mother died in 1999, we went through my grandmother's travel trunk, unopened for probably 40 years. Among other treasures, there was a velvet bag with 25 silver dollars, none of them more recent than 1931. Obviously, these were cherished items, preserved in their little (heavy!) bag in the trunk with other family photos and heirlooms. But we had no idea as to their relevance. It wasn't until we read my grandmother's miniscule writing in her 1930-1935 diary that we found out what it was: they were presented to her ("Pinkie") from her husband ("Dearie") on the occasion of the 25th wedding anniversary, along with 25 pink roses.
 |
| The mortuary |
And other things will remain mysteries until some researcher manages to link items together. I guess this is why communicating memories (like this blog!) are so important!
Mortuary
Death due to exposure, poor diet and accidents kept a mortician busy, especially with 30,000 local residents.
Like the dead after they were properly prepared, the outside of this building looked better than what was behind it, which was a simple log cabin. It actually is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Dawson City, having escaped damage by permafrost or fire.
It was a great tour, and encouraged me to go on others. If I'd had time I would have done every single one!
 |
| Another street scene: the post office is the distinctive building on the right |
S. S. Keno
 |
| Galley on the S.S. Keno: just look at that stove!! |
While I had gone on the
S. S. Klondike in Whitehorse, Dawson City has its own historic stern paddlewheeler, the
S. S. Keno. The Keno is a much smaller ship, but was no less hardworking, hauling food, chickens, whiskey, champagne, curling irons, sewing machines, curtains, gum boots, picks, miner's outfits and fancy skirts up the Yukon, and bringing gold, wood, furs, fish, lead and silver ore back. The passenger deck above was surprisingly light and bright, with glass skylights above.
And I would have killed for a galley like that!
The afternoon tour was really fun, entitled "Strange things done in the midnight sun," which is a line taken from the Robert Service poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Our interpreter, Justin, has been doing this now for a couple of years, and, while he studied graphic design in Toronto, he is a born performer, and made the tour an outstanding one. He enlivened the tour with personal experiences: with "Caveman Bill" who back in the 1970s made a $50 bet that he could last a week in a cave on the west side of the Yukon in the dead of winter, and is still living there; his four-year stint as a bouncer (the "skinniest bouncer in the Yukon") in the "Pit" (from "armpit"), the rankest of Dawson City's saloons.
 |
| Justin inside the bank, which looked a lot like the Post Office! |
The Bank
So. Much. Gold.
Gold dust, gold nuggets, gold flakes.
So much gold passed through these walls, that it boggles the mind. Millions of dollars worth in the three years of the boom, and then some.
There was so much gold that the very air glittered with it. While that might be an exaggeration, years after, when times were tough in the Canadian depression, children would tear up the boardwalks and pan the dirt underneath, earning $75 per day. When a carpentry company bid on renovating the bank, they put in a low bid, but asked that they be able to keep any gold they found in the building. Turned out to be a good deal, as they found gold dust in the corners and bases of the walls worth $80,000.
There was a lot of gold in Dawson City. And still is.
Ruby's Place
Born in France, Mathilde Ruby Scott was a grandmotherly type who had lots of "nieces" come to visit with her, especially for the summer.
The "nieces" were very popular with the men of the town.
Ruby knit booties for all the new babies, baked cookies for the children after school, offered rounds of drinks for the men, and donated money to worthwhile civic causes.
Consequently, she outlasted several attempts to oust her from her house and place of business, but she her "house of ill repute" was finally closed down in 1965.
The inside of the building needs work, but if you close your eyes and listen to the peeling-papered walls, you'll hear the laughter, the clink of glasses and ice, skirts swishing, belts being unbuckled and pants dropping to the floor... and more gold passing hands.
 |
| Justin preparing a "Sour Toe" cocktail in the Red Feather Saloon |
Red Feather Saloon
This is one of the few buildings that has been fully restored. It was a community project; even the painting above the bar (of course a reclining nude) was found in one resident's attic, and he donated it to the cause. It exactly matches the photographs of what the bar looked like back in the day!
I was surprised that the bar was painted WHITE, but it makes perfect sense. In the long, cold, dark winters, you want something to brighten up your life while you're drinking whiskey!
Justin regaled us with tales of the Dawson City "Sour Toe" cocktail: how it originated (yes, from a poor miner's frostbit toe), to the sort of unbelievable story of how a friend of his decided he was going to pay the $500 fine for ingesting the toe, and with malice aforethought brought $500 dollars with him, and upon swallowing it, promptly laid five $100 bills on the bar. This story even made
CNN news!
And the fine for ingesting the toe is now up to $2,500.
It was a very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, although I will not be ordering one of the cocktails. I think I'd rather spend a winter in Dawson to become a true Yukoner!
 |
| An eclectic selection of merchandise |
Dawson City shopping
I also did some shopping. You have to understand that the stores here are not just tourist stores. Yes, there are T-shirts and gew-gaws: mugs, pins, stickers and souvenirs, but the stores here also are working stores.
The trading post is used by the First Nations people: there are beads, needles, sinew, thread, furs (rabbit fur: $27; beaver: $149) and leather: home-smoke moosehide ($600) and deerhide (price varies according to size and quality).
 |
| Interior furnishings of the Jack London cabin (in Dawson City) |
The mercantiles are used by everyone: there are washing machines, couches, dishes, camping and mining gear, rock hammers and compasses, mastodon tusks and mosquito netting, antique dishes and vintage glasses, beaded moccasins, oars, books, paper, pens: everything you could possibly need, and a lot of stuff that you don't.
Cabins in the Woods
I also made a pilgrimage to the two historic cabins in Dawson: the Jack London cabin, rented by the writer for a year, and the Robert Service cabin, where the "Bard of the Yukon" lived from 1909-1912.
 |
| Robert Service cabin |
Discovered in 1936 by two miners who stumbled across the original Jack London cabin on Henderson Creek, it wasn't until 1965 that it was "re-found," dismantled and moved from its original location. The logs from this cabin were divided in two and part of the logs were used in this cabin; in Dawson Creek, and part in another reconstruction in Jack London Square in Oakland.
Up until three years ago, I'd never heard of Robert Service, but then I read something of his poetry, and something just clicked. He just captures the essence of the outdoors, and the wild lands. Take these stanzas from "The Spell of the Yukon" (
click here for the complete poem)
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.
...
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
There is just such an honesty and raw emotion to his words that really speak to me. His cabin has become something of a shrine for everyone who loves his poetry, and I can see why.
Last flings
My last fling in Dawson City was to go to Peabody's Photo Parlour and have an old-time portrait done. I had fun, I hope the gal dresser had fun doing the sets and costuming, and I came away with four photos, one of which is shown here.
And, the crowning glory was a stop at the bakery for a late lunch sandwich. Honestly: BEST TURKEY CLUB SANDWICH EVER. It was a REAL TURKEY SANDWICH with honest-to-God thick slices of turkey, like you'd have after Thanksgiving, loaded with bacon, lettuce and tomato on a croissant (because they didn't have anything else). TO DIE FOR.
I really enjoyed my (extended) stay in Dawson, and would happily go back.
Especially if there were a turkey sandwich waiting!
