Canada - The Yukon Gold Rush

Gold panning in the Klondike brought riches to Dawson City.

Feb 6, 2007

The lure of gold brought thousands of people from around the world to the Yukon Gold Rush to pan for gold and Dawson City became a rich town from the Bonanza Creek gold.

In August 1896 a couple of Yukon Indians, Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie plus an American, George Carmack, stopped by a stream named Rabbit Creek to try their luck with a bit of gold panning. And lucky they were. They struck a major seam, renamed the stream Bonanza Creek, and their haul triggered the biggest gold rush the world has ever seen.

Canada - The Yukon - Gold Fever

But it was not until May 14th, 1897, when the ice broke on the Yukon River, that miners could take their secret to the outside world. By 1898 Gold Fever had struck and more than 100,000 people from all parts of the globe set out for the Klondike, but less than half actually made it. Between the dream and the reality was the hardship of transporting a ton of goods through harsh wilderness and mountain trails. They suffered terrible hardships, yet they struggled on - such was the lure of gold on the trail of ‘98.

Canada - The Yukon - Whitehorse

Apart from the growth of the two main towns in the Yukon, Whitehorse and Dawson City, this vast area, the size of Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands combined, has not changed much since the gold rush.

Visitors usually fly into Whitehorse The town hardly existed before the Gold Rush. It was no more than a base for stampeders who gathered on the shores of the Yukon River - the last stop before the grim journey ahead to the gold fields. With the completion of the Alaska Highway in 1943 it experienced a population boom and today around 20,000 people live here. Whitehorse has plenty of good accommodation and is a convenient place to begin an exploration of the Yukon.

Canada - The Yukon - The First Nation People

The indiginous First Nation people play an important part in Yukon tourism. They provide the guides for hunting, fishing, wilderness exploring, and they have a pride in their history and heritage which was, for a long time, undermined by the white population.

Kluane National Park was chosen by the United Nations as aWorld Heritage Site, it contains Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak at 19,850 feet, as well as the towering St. Elias Mountains between whose slopes is the largest non-polar ice field in the world. It’s a staggering sight. The Lowell Glacier is here. Take a helicopter trip to see it in all its glory. It sweeps down through the mountains like a gigantic, glistening blue and white snake. The sheer size of it is mind boggling - and this is only one out of 2,000.

Canada - The Yukon - Dawson City

Next stop Dawson City. An Air North plane takes you there from Whitehorse - a tiny DC-3, with propellers All that is missing was Humphrey Bogart. But if you can’t have Casablanca, Dawson is almost as good. Wooden boardwalks still edge the dirt roads and you can still blow it all on gaming and good times. Diamond Tooth Gertie’s is the place to go. From the dealers at the blackjack tables to the can-can dancers it retains the feeling of its grand Victorian heyday. During the gold rush Dawson became a city of affluence and culture to rival San Francisco.

Canada - The Yukon - Robert Service - Bard of the Yukon

Walk down the main street in Dawson City and you could be on the set of any spaghetti western. People rest on wooden forms outside the brightly coloured wooden shop fronts. There are deserted houses standing drunkenly on ground which collapsed under them when the permafrost melted, and elegant old buildings like the Canadian Bank of Commerce where Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon, worked and composed some of his poems.

The landscape around Dawson is magnificent. Everyone visits the goldfields. It’s about a12 mile drive out of town to Bonanza Creek and don’t forget to stop en route at the Dome Lookout for a bird’s eye view of Dawson and a great view of the Yukon River.

The Klondike Gold Rush, while short lived, brought with it the benefit of opening up the Canadian north The Yukon is now easily accessible and mining is still going on.

The copyright of the article Canada - The Yukon Gold Rush in Historical Travel is owned by Cathy Smith. Permission to republish Canada - The Yukon Gold Rush in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.