That Sunday on the banks of Rabbit Creek

USA – Canada | Anno 2005

 

Saturday 23 July | Dawson City

 

 

Saturday 23 July | Dawson City

That the dark winter days in Dawson can be depressing, Marlene readily admits. However, even though the temperature drops between –40 and –50 °C (–40 and –58 °F) in winter, she still finds it quite pleasant here. Winters are dry, so you can dress for the cold, go out, visit friends, and have family gatherings. Her wise advice is not to stay alone in your place.

Working as a nurse in Dawson for a year seemed appealing to her. Meanwhile, she has been living and working here for 38 years

Originally from Austria, Marlene now is working at the Visitor Reception Centre. She emigrated to Canada with her parents when she was twelve. Working as a nurse in Dawson for a year seemed appealing to her. Meanwhile, she has been living and working here for 38 years.

 

Dawson City

An audio walk through the historic centre is what Marlene warmly recommends. We leave the visitor centre with a cassette player in our pocket and headphones on our heads, eager to absorb the atmosphere of a former gold rush town.

In 1896, we learn, this place was nothing more than a mud flat at the confluence of the Klondike and the Yukon. It's hard to believe that almost thirty thousand people crowded here just two years later. But, as we now know, that horde of gold prospectors arrived two years late. Within a week of the first discovery, adventurers from the nearby area had claimed all the promising shores of rivers and creeks.

One of the earliest pioneers was Joe Ladue. You can rightfully call him the founder of Dawson City, or better yet, the William Moore of Dawson City. He was too cunning to go digging for gold himself. As soon as he heard the spectacular news of the first discovery, he claimed an area of 65 hectares on the mud flat by the river. He didn't name it Ladue City but Dawson City, after a famous Canadian geologist. He then made a fortune selling the lots and the wood needed to build homes. After all, those greenhorns would have to endure seven winter months of cold, darkness, disease, isolation, and monotony.

 

Dawson City – Front Street

By 1897, there were already around five hundred log cabins here. However, life was not easy. A wage labourer earned $10 per day, precisely corresponding to the cost of living in the city. So, you didn't get rich.

In Paradise Alley lonely men could pay to taste paradise for a few minutes

Front Street is the main street, parallel to it runs the inconspicuous Paradise Alley. There, lonely men could pay to taste paradise for a few minutes. In the early years, a whopping 150 prostitutes were active here, the most famous of whom went by stage names like Klondike Kate or Bombay Peggy. If the curtains were open, that meant the lady was available.

 

Dawson City – Klondike Kate's restaurant

As Dawson City gained respectability and aimed to become a proper city from 1900 onwards, the prostitutes were gradually pushed to the outskirts. The increasing number of lawful wives joining their lonely husbands was not entirely unrelated to this evolution. The opening of the library in 1904 aligns with the same trend of civilization. A whopping six thousand books could be borrowed there.

Palace Grand Theatre not only staged plays and musical performances but also featured a nightly spectacle inspired by the exploits of William Tell. However, when, one day, the shooter was a bit less precise, and his graceful assistant was found to be missing a thumb after the performance, the spectacle was discontinued.

The graceful assistant was found to be missing a thumb after the performance

Dawson City – King Street

Midnigth Sun Hotel

For an isolated community, the importance of the Post Office can hardly be overstated. If mail arrived, that news spread like wildfire. Information from the outside world was a precious rarity. Even a three-month-old newspaper was bought, read from top to bottom and from front to back, and then resold. When the telegraph made its debut on 28 September 1899, it caused quite a shock. From then on, Dawson City was abruptly confronted with news that was only a few days old. As if it were hot off the press.

 

Dawson City – Westwinster Hotel

Westminster Hotel on 3rd Avenue still offers food and accommodation. They've been doing so since 1898, without any interruption.

Constructing buildings directly on permafrost without proper insulation? Not a good idea. Elsewhere on the same 3rd Avenue, you can witness first hand what happens when someone attempts that. The warmth from the building causes the ground to melt, and the structure sinks unevenly into the swamp it created. Building your home on stilts is the most practical solution for this problem.

The building sinks unevenly into the swamp it created

The effect of permafrost

Dawson City

One man’s breath is another man’s death, must have been the thought at Lowe's Mortuary. It goes without saying that the heavy work, unhygienic conditions, and diseases like scurvy took a toll. For a forward-thinking undertaker like Lowe, it was an autumn tradition to dig some graves in advance. This way, even in winters when the ground was rock hard frozen, he could provide every new customer with an eternal resting place without delay. But nature is not easily boxed in. After an epidemic, he found himself stuck with excess corpses for a whole winter.

Where gold comes to the surface, a bank must not be absent. In May 1898, the Bank of British North America was quick to open an office in Dawson where gold could be converted into cash. This was to the satisfaction of the Canadian government, as it did not want Dawson City to become an American enclave from where local wealth would flow to the USA.

However, luck was not on the bank's side. One winter, it burned down entirely. Extinguishing a fire at –45 °C (– 49 °F) is no easy task. All the gold stored there melted into one big lump. The respective owners were not amused.

Only about five months a year, from mid-May to mid-October, is the Yukon navigable. At that time, around 250 paddle steamboats made good use of it. An approaching boat was always a celebration in isolated Dawson. It brought mail and, most importantly, fresh food. As soon as its steam whistle was heard from a distance, everyone dropped what they were doing and hurried to the dock.

 

Stern-wheeler SS Keno

One of those boats was the SS Keno, a stern-wheeler with an enormous paddlewheel at the rear. Completely built in wood, its draft never exceeded 90 cm – even when loaded with silver, lead, and zinc ore concentrate. This was necessary on the narrow, fast-flowing tributaries of the Yukon River, where there were plenty of rocks just below the water's surface and sandbars that could shift during the spring thaw.

Ironically, the SS Keno was used in 1942 to transport personnel and equipment for the US Army. Their task was to construct the Alaska Highway to open up Alaska for rapid troop transport. With the Japanese having landed on the Aleutians, it was more than necessary. However, together with the completion of the Klondike Highway, the Alcan dealt a fatal blow to the paddle steamboats on the Yukon. Nowadays, the SS Keno enjoys a well-deserved retirement in a dry dock after a career of almost thirty years.

In the Dawson City Museum, we are immediately confronted with that legendary sixteenth of August in 1896. That’s quite logical, because what happened that day would change the entire region forever. It was the proverbial butterfly wing flap that caused a hurricane. The Klondike Gold Rush would finally free the north from its image of inhospitable terrain. A true stampede began, one that would captivate imaginations worldwide. Of all the gold rushes around the world, the Klondike's is one of the most famous. It has even embedded itself in our collective memory, thanks in part to novellas like Jack London's The Call of the Wild and films like Charlie Chaplin's unforgettable Gold Rush.

Taking only the gold yield into consideration, most gold prospectors didn't even cover their costs

If you consider only the gold yield, however, a different picture emerges. About thirty million dollars in gold was extracted between 1897 and 1899. If you were to distribute that amount equally among all gold diggers, they wouldn't even cover their costs. A few individuals could build an extravagant life with their proceeds, but the vast majority ended up impoverished. Yet, it was those few who kept the myth alive.

How exactly things unfolded on that Sunday afternoon in 1896 on the banks of Rabbit Creek is strongly debated. In the museum, four individuals are associated with the original discovery: Kate Carmack, her brother Jim Skookum, her nephew Charlie Tagish, and her husband George Carmack. George was the only white man in the group; the other three belonged to the First Nation Tagish. The fact that Kate Carmack is mentioned is quite exceptional, as many sources tend to overlook her contribution. History is still his story, as Jennifer pointed out to us in Skagway. Her indigenous background might have played a role in this. Originally, her name was Shaaw Tlaá.

In any case, it was one of these four pioneers who saw something shimmering in the river. Maybe it was George Carmack, perhaps it was Jim Skookum. It's even possible that it was Kate Carmack. But it was George Carmack who registered the discovery in nearby Forty Mile exclusively in his name, claiming that the indigenous population had no registration rights. Soon, Rabbit Creek would be renamed Bonanza Creek, the name under which the river would become world-famous. However, it would take two more years before the gold rushers would arrive here.

Exposing the pay streak was no easy task because it required digging through two to three meters of permafrost

Placer gold mining, as the museum calls it, was the technique employed by gold diggers. This meant they were trying to extract gold from river sediment. This gold had been released by erosion from gold veins high in the mountains and had been transported down to the valley by the river. Over time, it had sunk deeper into the gravel due to its weight until it hit the bedrock.

The goal was to expose that bottom layer, the so-called pay streak. Not an easy task, as it required digging through two to three meters of permafrost. This was typically a winter job. Initially, permafrost was worked with wood fires, but that was expensive because thawing one cubic meter of permafrost required one cubic meter of wood. Later, they switched to steam hoses, which blew hot steam over the permafrost. Even later, they used cold water but under high pressure.

Once the soil was dug down to the solid rock, they began to bring up the pay dirt, the material in which they suspected the presence of gold. In spring, when enough water was available, it was time for the moment of truth – the pay dirt was sieved. Once done, the gold digger headed to town to cash in the yield. Afterward, he treated himself to his annual clean-up at the barber, his yearly warm bath, and who knows what other indulgences.

Every year, the gold prospectors treated themselves to a clean-up at the barbershop and a warm bath

That's the theory. How the pay dirt is actually sieved in practice is what John, one of the museum staff, will show us. In a large bucket, he mixes four rough gold grains, possibly even smaller than a pea, through a slurry of gravel and sand that he scooped up in the parking lot. That mixture is supposed to pass for pay dirt. The goal is for me to recover these four gold grains later, he grins.

 

"No Parking" sign

Sluice box

To start, he pours the pay dirt over the sieve at the top of a sluice box. Then, he pours plenty of water over it while vigorously shaking the wooden apparatus. This process leaves the large stones behind in the sieve, allowing the finer material to pass through the sieve and onto a trough with crossbars. The heavier elements, including the gold in principle, get trapped behind those crossbars, while the lighter gravel flows away with the streaming water over the trough.

Using a shovel, John now transfers those residues into a round gold pan. By gently swirling the contents of the gold pan, pouring off the water at the right moment, and then adding fresh water again, he gradually manages to remove more and more of the lighter gravel. To our considerable surprise, he ultimately retains only the four gold nuggets.

Some gold prospectors became fabulously wealthy, while others found nothing at all

But the demonstration is not yet complete. John heats the gold to its melting temperature of 1,860 °C (3,380 °F) and pours it into a cross-shaped mould. It may not be a true work of art, but with some imagination, we can recognize a cross in the end product.

Nevertheless, all this digging remained a gamble for the gold prospectors. The way the pay streaks meandered through the frozen gravel of the riverbeds was unpredictable. Some gold prospectors became fabulously wealthy, while others found nothing at all. Greenhorns had to make do with the scraps at the edges of the creeks. However, that wasn't always a disappointment. Because although the slopes above the creeks were deemed worthless by more experienced gold prospectors, they sometimes turned out to be just as rich as the riverbeds.

 

Dawson City – The Klondike River (clear water) flows into the Yukon River (chocolate-brown water)

What the Corcovado with its gigantic Christ statue is to Rio de Janeiro, the Dome is to Dawson City. Nowhere in the city can you overlook the monumental silhouette of this granite mound. We drive to the top and gaze from an elevation of 873 meters over the expansive surroundings. At our feet, the buildings are neatly arranged in a perfect checkerboard pattern, as if this were never a chaotic gold rush town.

 

Yukon (upstream)

From the left, the clear water of the Klondike flows into the muddy brown Yukon. Several hundred meters away, it manages to maintain its purity, but it is ultimately unable to withstand the influx of silt-laden water. As far as we can see, the mighty Yukon winds its way between green hills, both upstream and downstream. And the thick blueberries growing on the slope are delicious.

 

Yukon (downstream)

The place where it all began in 1896, the famous Bonanza Creek, is located approximately sixteen kilometres southeast of Dawson City. On the way there, we come across Dredge #4, a structure eight stories high. It looks like a boat that has accidentally ended up on land. Such enormous dredging machines marked the transition from artisanal to industrial gold mining in the early 20th century. It became possible to extract gold from less profitable plots as well.

 

Dredge #4

Dredge #4 strongly resembles a boat, and in fact, it is one. This bucket-line dredge floated on the water of the pond it created. Immediately noticeable is the long digging arm, almost 33 meters long, protruding from the front of the apparatus. With this arm, it excavated through the sediment, while a continuous chain with 72 buckets transferred the excavated material to the belly of the monster. This happened at the incredible speed of 22 buckets per minute. Every three seconds, a metal bucket scraped up dredge material. We try to imagine the noise.

On board, the pay dirt underwent several operations that fundamentally weren't much different from what John showed us in the museum. Large stones were sieved out in a long drum, then the finer material was shaken and rinsed in troughs until the rough gold particles got stuck in a thick coconut mat. This way, they captured approximately 75% of the existing gold. For safety, a second, smaller installation was mounted behind it. This managed to retrieve another 20% of the gold.

Where the dredge had dug through the earth layers, only a lunar landscape remained

Dredge #4 was active for forty-six years, from 1913 to 1959. It is the largest bucket-line dredge North America has ever seen. It worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year after year, from late April to late November. Every day, it moved almost 14,000 m³ of gravel. In total, it extracted nine tons of gold. But where it had dug through the earth layers, only a lunar landscape remained.

 

Bonanza Creek – Discovery Claim

Barely a kilometre and a half further, we come across Discovery Claim, later named that way because it was here on 16 August 1896, that the first gold was found. Yukon has since celebrated its Discovery Day, an annual holiday on 16 August. On the commemorative stone, we read the well-known story of the discovery. Skookum Jim, Tagish Charlie, and George Carmack are mentioned, but the search for Shaaw Tlaá, alias Kate Carmack, is in vain.

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in certainly didn't have a name that would ensure them a lasting place in our memory

Amidst all the commotion, you might almost forget that this land was not uninhabited when the gold seekers appeared on the scene. For centuries, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in considered the banks of these rivers and the surrounding mountains their homeland. The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in certainly didn't have a name that would ensure them a lasting place in our memory. But the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre is trying to change that.

Since time immemorial, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in set up their camp on Tr’ochëk, on the left bank of the Klondike River during the summers. There, they fished for salmon that came to spawn and hunted for caribou grazing in the plains. For a quarter of a century, Western adventurers had been passing through the Yukon and Klondike riverbanks during the summers. However, when, from 8 June 1898, a fleet of seven thousand boats with 28,000 gold seekers aboard floated down the Yukon, it was a different story. The newcomers settled on the right bank of the Klondike, directly opposite Tr’ochëk. Eventually, Dawson City would rise in that spot.

Without realizing it, Chief Isaac shielded his people from the contagious diseases that had decimated the indigenous population elsewhere

Chief Isaac took precautions. In consultation with the Anglican church and the ever-active Mounties, he led his people to Moosehide, a place five kilometres downstream along the Yukon. He could not have made a better decision. Without realizing it, Chief Isaac thus shielded his people from the contagious diseases that had decimated the indigenous population elsewhere.

 

Dawson City – George Black Ferry to Top of the World Highway

Fascinating is the image that the cultural centre Dänojà Zho brings forth of this civilization. We can only be impressed by the courageous efforts, including the use of CDs and DVDs, to sustain the dwindling language and culture of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. Just as we were with the enthusiasm of Brandon, Christina, and Sam in Prince Rupert. However, we can hardly suppress an uncomfortable feeling of scepticism about the sustainability of these projects.

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Jaak Palmans

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