Mining Tourist Gold

It was once a First Nations fishing village located on a piece of swampy permafrost at the edge of the Yukon River. But then came the gold rush, and Dawson City became, for a while, the “Paris of the North.”

The transformation began in August 1896, when local prospectors George Carmack, Dawson Charlie, and Skookum Jim Mason found gold in nearby Rabbit Creek (now named Bonanza Creek). When news of the discovery spread across the world, thousands of stampeders answered the siren call, heading north to make their fortune scrabbling for gold.

At the same time, slick entrepreneurs discovered an easier way to strike it rich. They opened sawmills and built casinos, dance halls, hotels, saloons, restaurants, and houses for the successful. By 1898, Dawson City had swollen into a ramshackle conglomeration of more than 40,000 miners and hangerson, becoming the largest Canadian city west of Winnipeg.

But as miners found fewer and fewer flecks of gold in their pans, Dawson experienced a mass exodus. In 1899 alone, eight thousand people left Dawson City to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Within a few years, Dawson City reverted into a Subarctic community of about two thousand residents, many haunted by memories of long-gone dancing girls and fast living. By 1960, Dawson claimed a mere three hundred and fifty residents.

With its wild and turbulent history behind it, Dawson City today mines for tourist gold. The city of about two thousand people draws close to 60,000 tourists each year — mostly from Canada, the United States and Europe. Parks Canada has restored the buildings that line the streets and painted their bright facades yellow, blue, or green. Their windows display the same items that might have been on display in their glory days. In former prospector Émilie Fortin Tremblay’s high-end fashion store, for instance, a white cotton blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves carries the overtones of luxury. A tin washtub sits in the window of Ruby’s Place, once a combined laundry and brothel. Oak Hall displays general late-nineteenth-century merchandise. While some buildings lie empty and forlorn, enterprising craftspeople have turned others into boutiques or studios where they combine ivory from the tusks of ancient mastodons with gold, transforming them into unique pieces of jewellery.

Bombay Peggy’s Inn and Tavern is one old house that didn’t want to die. Standing vacant and sinking into a swamp, it attracted the attention of two enterprising Klondike women, Kim Bouzane and Wendy Cairns. These determined women met about fifteen years ago. “I was passing through at the time,” Kim explains, “and Wendy was a dancer at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall.” As they got the feel of the historic town — with its wooden sidewalks, dirt roads and historic buildings — the lure of the Yukon seduced them and they decided to stay. Together, they worked to restore the home’s faded facade into an elegant Victorian-style inn — not an easy task in Dawson City, where building bylaws dictate that all renovations must conform to the total historic appearance of the city.

Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre (Long Time Ago House) tells the story of the original inhabitants of the area, the Hanspeaking Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. The centre displays artifacts and photos that bring this First Nation, that lived by fishing the Dawson River, into perspective.

The Dawson City Museum provides dramatic explanations of mining and social history, and even tells why mastodons roamed the area thousands of years ago. Formerly the Old Territorial Administration Building, this National Historic Site is an impressive stone structure designed by Thomas W. Fuller — son of Thomas Fuller, the architect of Canada’s Houses of Parliament in Ottawa — and built in 1901. Inside, an exhibit including the award-winning documentary City of Gold features author Pierre Berton recounting the gold rush era from a personal point of view — his father was a stampeder.

The story of Dawson also comes to life with a trip to Claim No. 6 on Bonanza Creek, about a kilometre downstream from where Carmack found the first gold nuggets in 1896. With only a pickaxe, shovel, and gold pan provided by the Klondike Visitors association, anyone can try their luck — if they find gold, they can keep it.

Is there still gold left after the gold rush? Yolanda, our server at Klondike Kate’s Cabins and Restaurant, points to six gold nuggets dangling from a chain around her neck. “There’s gold — I found these on my own claim,” she says.

At night — in the eerie glow of the midnight sun — the sparkling lights, the can-can girls, and the roulette tables at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s beckon. Named after a dance hall queen who distinguished herself with a sparkling diamond wedged between her two front teeth, the hall rocks with the jangle of slot machines and the pounding honkytonk beat of the musical extravaganza.

But nothing can compete with the natural beauty of the northern lights. By late August, when the sun drops below the horizon, the lights ripple across the night sky in shimmering greens, reds, purples, and blues. Then, in their mystical glow, Dawson City reverts to its ghostly past.

Katherine McIntyre is a freelance writer who combines travel writing with Canadian history. This article originally appeared in the October-November 2007 issue of The Beaver magazine.