Gold Rush Theatres of the Klondike

“Gold Rush Theatres of the Klondike” by Michael R. Booth. This article was originally printed in The Beaver, Spring 1962, Vol. 41, No. 4, Outfit 292, on pages 32-37.

Businesses come and go as natural disasters, recessions, and depressions leave their blight on the face of towns and cities and the people that inhabit them. Gold Rush Theatres of the Klondike tells about the many theatres of Dawson City, Yukon, most of which disappeared when boom time went bust.

Dawson City was bustling with activity, and money, when the gold rush started in 1898. At the height of the boom, as many as twenty thousand people called it home, seeing it as the next “pot of gold under the rainbow.” As men made their fortunes, the theatres, dance halls, and saloons sprang up to help them spend it.

Booth tells us about Dawson's first theatres: the Opera House; the Pavilion; the Combination (renamed the Tivoli), which advertised “Every evening a Bevy of Beauties in Title Roles,” and played to near suffocation in August of '98; then the Monte Carlo, the first theatre to be fitted with electric lights. The year 1899 saw the birth of the Novelty, an opera house opened by the Female Extravaganza Company before seven hundred people; the Amphitheatre; and “the finest of them all,” the Palace Grand. With seating for 2,200 and several hundred ‘opera chairs’ for patrons, it indeed lived up to its name.

Plain or fancy, all Dawson theatres had the same architectural pattern: a bar and gambling rooms in the front and a theatre in the rear, with a stage, boxes at the side, and benches on the floor. And, most of the seats were occupied by men.

Some of Dawson City's female singers and performers became household names. There was Klondike Kate, Snake Hips Lilly, Montreal Marie, Caprice, and Cad Wilson. Even young nine-year-old Margie Newman, the “Princess of the Klondike,” stole the hearts and fortunes of tough, nostalgic miners.

Fire and financial woes put an end to the great theatres; only the Palace Grand was spared and is now restored. Dawson lost its lustre when news came in 1899 of a new gold rush in Nome, Alaska.