Dawson City

We've been in Dawson City for 2 days now, the weather has been gorgeous, hot (25 - 28 degrees C) and sunny and we have seen a lot. Apparently spring break up of the ice on the Yukon River was late this year (May 16),  but summer and 24 hours daylight is here now.  Parks Canada have many buildings that they have restored here and the town  has strict rules for any new building, which must keep in character, the only thing that they don't control is the colour of the paint.  The town is aiming to get designation as a UNESCO Heritage Site (Population of Dawson Creek now is 1,500, in the 1890's at the peak of the Goldrush it was 30,000).  Dawson City sits on the flood plain of the Yukon river, and they have had to build a levee along the banks of the river to prevent spring run-off flooding.  Most of the houses are built on piles, rather than having basements because of the permafrost - which is a layer of earth of about 15-20 feet deep on top of the bed rock that is permanently frozen.  This area of Canada and parts of Alaska were not covered with ice during the ice age (Beringia region), early man and beasts roamed the area and bones & ivory  tusks of mammoths appeared occasionally  in the silt & gravel layers that the prospectors were thawing and digging up on their quest for gold.

new buildings

Old buildings

We took a tour put on by Parks Canada entitled "Then and Now", where an actress in period costume, and a Current Parks Canada Tour Guide took us to the famous sites and described what Dawson City was like in the past, and some info on what happens now. The walking tour took 1.5.hours and was well done.  See some of the photos below.

The Bank - note use of chicken wire

The Saloon

The Canada Post office with Post Boxes marked DC (Dominion of Canada

In the evening we drove up to Midnight Dome, a peak of about 2,000 ft in the area, with an amazing view of the Yukon River Valley and Dawson city below.

Dawson City from Midnight Dome

Yukon River Downstream from Dawson City

The next day we did our gold panning at an area placer mine, that is a mine that searches for gold in gravel using water and agitation to wash away the unwanted material from the gold nuggets.  Gold is 19 times as heavy as water and 7 times as heavy as the gravel/silt,  which is where the panning or sluicing technique comes in for recovering the gold from the motherlode of gravel.  We had a lot of fun learning how to pan for gold, and then we went to another Parks Canada National Historic Site, Dredge 4, the biggest floating dredger ever to be built in this area for commercial gold mining in the creeks.  We drove a little further up Bonanza  Creek, to where the initial discovery of gold was made, that started the goldrush stampede to the Klondike.

Dredge # 4

Next installment, the Dempster Highway and Inuvik