Following Gold and the Northern Lights – Yukon

Free education is abundant, all over the Internet.  

It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.  

Naval Ravikant

Part of the Robinson Roadhouse, on the Klondike Highway

Along roads less traveled, one step at a time

Seeing small towns full of bigger-than-life folks and history

The tone of a place set by its people

Adventure doesn’t wait

When the rest of the world is too small for your traveling dreams, put yourself in a bigger picture.  In the Yukon, with its immeasurable vastness, splendor, toughness, kindness and pristine wilderness, I am here to enjoy the gift of awe.

The humblest of cabin can tell an amazing story, should you take the time to search, discover, see and listen.  Attention to details grows as you become ever so dwarfed by the immensity.  Enter a world where nature rules, comforting and beautiful.

Leaving the quirky hamlet of Chicken behind, I traveled to the Yukon via what began as a modest pack trail, and now called the ‘Top of the World Highway’.  Open only in the summer with difficult weather and driving conditions most of the time: wind, rain, fog, snow, frost, potholes, hairpins, washboards, no shoulder nor guardrails.  Drivers beware. 

Its name is not completely arbitrary since most of the way you travel along tall peaks and crests, generally above the tree line, looking over immense valleys and mountain ridgetops as far as the eye can see when/if the fog lifts.  Immerse yourself in a remote, stark, primeval subarctic unadulterated wilderness, just a tad below the Arctic circle.

The most northern international border crossing in North America is on this road.  The Little Gold / Poker Creek border crossing welcomes you to the Yukon (eastbound) or Alaska (westbound).  

Inuksuk (that which acts in the capacity of a human)

Inuit stone landmark or cairn

Top of the World Highway

The Yukon defied settlement as it was surrounded on three sides by great mountain ranges.  Only the Yukon River offered begrudging entry.  Even then, the harsh northern climate insured that the river would be closed to navigation for over eight months of the year.  Nevertheless, it was the river, with its seasonal ebb and flow, that established the rhythm and shaped the character of Yukon life.

Larger than life

Plus grand que nature

Yukon sign as you enter its borders

Fox going back to its den with breakfast

By Cecil, fellow traveler for a day, with much better camera

Nearly 80% of Yukon is pristine wilderness

The Yukon River is the third longest in North America (1,980 miles, 3,190 km) after the Mississippi (US) and the Mackenzie (NWT), and just ahead of the Saint Lawrence (Canada).  It travels from BC to the Arctic Circle (Bering Sea) and discharges an immense basin of more than 840,000 square km (325,000 square miles) an area 25% larger than Alberta or Texas, its drainage area half in Canada, half in the USA.

The river normally freezes about mid-October and reopens around early May.  Since 1896, many wagered on the exact date and time the ice will break (earliest recorded: 4/23, latest: 5/28).  A tripod is set up on the ice and connected by cable to the shore.  When the ice starts moving, it takes the tripod with it, stopping the clock and recording the official break up time.  Last year, Dawson City received 4,999 entries of $2.00/each, and a winner took home $4,000; a six-year-old girl from Whitehorse.  It happened to also be on her birthday. 

To celebrate the end of a cold, long, dark enveloping winter, all residents of Dawson City take the day off when the first boat of the season arrives.

Free ferry to Dawson City

My first view of the mighty Yukon River,

long lifeblood of the indigenous people

Earliest inhabitants traveled the river by

birchbark canoes, rafts, and moose-hide boats.

First non-aboriginals to travel on the river were

Russian explorers in the 1830’s.

The Yukon River has been a natural highway for thousands of years.  The human history of the territory extends back some 25,000-40,000 years.  Salmon have traveled upriver thousands of kilometers, for hundreds of generations, to reach their spawning grounds.  The river brought First Nations People food and connected their 70+ communities/tribes in the Yukon and Alaska. 

The river shaped their vessels, language, and stories.  In the Athapaskan tradition, its importance is reflected in stories of a mythic hero who traveled the river, bringing order to the world.  Athapaskan people followed the river to trade with other Athapaskans and Coastal Tlingits as well as white traders and prospectors. 

Then the river brought the Gold Rush stampeders into the country, transforming it forever.  Well-heeled newcomers journeyed by steamer to the Yukon River’s mouth on the Bering Sea, then upriver to Dawson City.  The vast majority, however, struggled over the Chilkoot Pass and braved the rapids downstream in makeshift boats and rafts.

‘If you are not close to the river, you are lost.’

Yupik elder, Mary-Anne Immamak

Of Emmomak, Alaska

The exact location of the international boundary between Alaska and Canada was first discussed in 1825, when Alaska was still a Russian possession.  Talks between Russia and Britain – negotiating on behalf of Canada – dragged on for some time.  One of the issues to be settled was which degree of longitude would form Alaska’s eastern boundary.  Although the Russians wanted the 139^th meridian to form the border, they eventually agreed on the 141^st, in return for some concessions.  As a result, the Klondike gold fields ended up on the Canadian side of that border. 

Leading us to Dawson City, a small town with a huge personality… a living museum… the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush.

In a world gripped by economic depression, news of the Klondike gold discovery was more than electrifying.  Stampeders from many nations brave the long and difficult journey to the cabins and tents of the new mining camp.  Dawson City sprang overnight as the hub of service and supply for the goldfields, a legendary boomtown with wooden boardwalks, false fronted dance halls, stores, and warehouses.

One million people, it is said, laid plans to go to the Klondike.  One hundred thousand set off and only about thirty to forty thousand actually made it.  What was moose pasture and a fish camp to the Tr’öndek Hwëch’in for many generations was transformed into a metropolis in as little as two short years.   Dawson City grew slowly throughout the winter of 1897, but once the Yukon River thawed in May of 1898, boats arrived by the hundreds and pulled to shore at all hours of the day and night.  Some people found gold deposits and became immensely wealthy, but it’s estimated that only 4,000 prospectors even found any gold at all.  It was easier, and possibly more profitable, to mine the miner. 

When Dawson City became capital of the newly created Yukon Territory (1898), there were 40,000 people living there.  Dawson City was the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg in 1899.  The Klondike was not called a Rush for no reason, it was truly short-lived (1896-1899).  By 1902, only 5,000 called Dawson City home. 

Fabulous wealth and isolation sparked a demand for extravagances, many of which were still uncommon in southern cities.  Electricity, telephone service, luxury foods and high fashions imported from outside earned Dawson City the title of ‘Paris of the North’.  The frenzy of the Klondike Gold Rush lasted only two years, but Dawson City today remains a symbol of the dramatic changes it brought to the land and people of the Yukon.  It existed as a northern reality with southern expectations. 

Whitehorse became the capital in 1953 after the Alaska Highway missed the town of Dawson City by 300 miles (480 km), no longer being on a main route, Dawson City’s population dwindled to a mere 500 people.  In 1959 Parks Canada began conserving some of the buildings in the town, laying the foundation for its re-incarnation as a tourism venue.  

‘Oh no, but they was tough times.

But just the same, I’d rather they come back again.’

Harry Leamon, 1899 stampeder

From a 1985 interview

A lone miner holding his (her) gold pan is the enduring symbol of the Gold Rush, but early miners spent more time digging than panning.  The richest deposits of gold were buried deep beneath the permafrost.  Working in the winter’s bitter cold and sub-arctic gloom, the miners thawed the frozen ground with fires and then started digging.  In the spring, they strained to see the glint of gold in their sluice boxes.  A few lucky miners hit rich pay in the creeks of the Klondike, but the easy gold was soon gone.  By 1900, most miners had sold their claims to corporations, and the era of the individual miner was at an end.

‘Mining is a business now, not a gamble.’

1914

Gold profits soared with the arrival of large-scale corporate mining.  For decades, from as early as 1906, the grinding and screeching of gold dredges echoed throughout the Klondike.  Working day and night these ‘monsters of the creeks’ churned through river valleys, separating gold from gravel, and leaving behind enormous worm-like tailing piles.  A large hydroelectric plant supplied power to the dredges, while a small army of workers prepared the ground ahead of them, thawing permafrost and stripping away muck.  Dredging faded out in 1966 but today, a new generation actively pursues gold mining in the Klondike with smaller, more maneuverable machines.

Light fog rising over the river

Dawson City in background

First road to Dawson City opened in 1955

Side-wheeler boat on the Yukon River

Going from Dawson City to Moosehide

Effortless and quick downstream, difficult and slow upstream

Moosehide where natives escaped to, during the Gold Rush

to preserve their way of life

Named such because of the shape of a nearby 1700-year-old landslide

Sternwheelers fought the Yukon’s waters for almost a century.  In 1898, dozens of ships jockeyed for space along its riverbank, unloading supplies and stampeders, and hauling out passengers and gold.  The sound of a steam whistle evokes fond memories for many residents of Dawson City.

More than 250 sternwheelers plied Yukon waters from 1896 to the mid-1950s.  At one time, there were up to 70 of the majestic riverboats on the Yukon River alone.  The 500-mile journey from Whitehorse to Dawson City took only 40 hours while it took as much as 4 days the other way.  One day, 800 boats were counted on the Yukon river.  These boats had shallow drafts and wide hulls.  The rear paddle could maneuver it quickly in swift narrow rivers.  Most of the sternwheelers burned wood.  They usually took on 10 to 20 cords at a time, a process that took about an hour (1/3 of a cord at a time).  In 1916, BYN (British Yukon Navigation Company) steamers burned 8,000 cords of wood, at a cost of about $46,000 ($5.75/cord).  Talk about rapid deforestation!

Additionally, Dawson City was a place where two cultures met.  Here you are standing in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in.  Just upstream, where the Yukon and the Klondike rivers meet, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in once caught and dried salmon.  They called the tributary river Tr’ondëk (aka Hammer Stone Water) since they hammered stakes into the river bottom to build fish traps. 

Though the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in have known this land intimately for thousands of years, to Gold Rush stampeders, this remote area was ‘a land where the mountains are nameless’.  As these newcomers flooded onto the flat where Dawson City stands today, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in moved downstream to Moosehide, protecting their traditional language and culture from the overwhelming influence of the Klondike Gold Rush.  

Our guide, dressed in period costume

He has done this type of historically accurate theater for 17 years!

In the Hub Saloon, later the Red Theater Saloon

One of 27 such licensed establishments in the days

Restored as the 1910 original

Dawson City was the destination where nefarious characters followed the worn paths of stampeders, eager to take gold from the miners as quickly as they could unearth it.  Typhoid, floods, and fires drove many away in late 1800, early 1900.  Gold was gone by then too.  A historical rush in one fashion or another.

In August 1896, it is said that American prospector George Carmack found gold in the wild North.  But there would have been no Klondike Gold Rush if not for Yukon woman, Shaa Tlaa, also known as Kate Carmack of the Tagish First Nation.  The discovery of gold is widely credited to the men in her family: George Carmack (husband), Skookum Jim (brother), and Dawson Charlie (nephew).  According to author Fred N. Atwood, it may have been Kate who found the first nugget.  While salmon fishing at Rabbit Creek (Bonanza Creek now) during the summer of 1896, gold was discovered by  “…while Carmack was resting, his wife in wandering around, found a bit of bedrock exposed and, taking a pan of dirt, washed it and found that she had some four dollars in coarse gold.” The Alaska-Yukon Gold Book.

The Klondike Gold Rush was touched off by the discovery of placer gold on Rabbit (later Bonanza) Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River.  Miners already on the scene staked every creek (or pup) in the Klondike River and Indian River watershed, including the fabulously rich Eldorado.  Not until the middle of July 1897, did the outside world learn of the strike, when some of the newly rich pioneers arrived by steamboat on the West Coast.  The description of ‘a ton of gold’ in Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer triggered a veritable stampede. 

In the early winter of 1897, the territory’s first Commissioner was forced to winter with few supplies when river ice prevented him from reaching Dawson.  As a result of his experience, he ordered to run back anyone not bringing with them a year’s worth of supplies.  This supply, three pounds of food per day per person, plus equipment and tools added up to the famous ton of goods that stampeders had to haul over the Chilkoot Pass.

‘Our land is our history book.’

Elder Percy Henry

One ton of goods and a hard grind up the Chilkoot Trail got you into the Klondike.  Gold seekers heading to the Klondike in 1898 were required to pack and carry their goods over the Chilkoot Pass.  The list of supplies required for each man included 400 pounds of flour, 100 pounds of beans, and 100 pounds of sugar, just to name a few.  The average man took about 40 trips to haul his ton of supplies 33 miles to Bennett.  That’s 2,600 exhausting miles over the icy trail, up the golden stairs at the summit, through blizzards, and sub-zero conditions.  Most gold-seekers took at least three months to complete the task. 

The majority of the prospectors were just regular people – even the mayor of Seattle resigned from his position to search for gold.

When all was said and done, only a few hundred people truly got rich from finding gold during this time. Regardless, the adventurous prospector spirit permeated the area’s culture. Many returned home not rich with gold, but in adventure.

Façade made of pressed tin to look like ornate stonework

since there are not stones in this part of the world

Old Canadian Bank of Commerce building

Built 1901, served as bank until 1989

One of only seven in Canada

The poet Robert Service worked here briefly

Dawson City is called a ‘building preservationist dream’ with several old buildings being fixed and saved for future generations.

From a Wild West Magazine article:

Inventors dreamed up devices that promised to make the task of digging gold positively pleasant. Nikola Tesla, one of the pioneers of electricity, promoted an X-ray machine that would supposedly detect precious metals beneath the ground without all the trouble of digging. A Trans-Alaskan Gopher Company proposed to train gophers to claw through frozen gravel and uncover nuggets. Clairvoyants touted their abilities to pinpoint rich lodes of gold. Several ventures were underway to invade the Klondike by balloon.

There weren’t nearly enough ships in the Northwest to handle the stampede of gold seekers –2,800 from Seattle alone in a single week. Everything that floated was pressed into service –ancient paddle-wheelers and fishing boats, barges, coal ships still full of coal dust. All were overloaded, and many unseaworthy; they were dubbed ‘floating coffins’, and all too often they lived up to the name.

What the would-be miner needed by now was some way of getting his outfit to the gold fields, so anyone with a wagon and a team or a few mules could do well for himself or herself. Harriet Pullen, a widow with a brood of children, arrived in Skagway with $7 to her name, but parlayed it into a fortune by driving a freight outfit all day and, at night, baking apple pies in pans hammered out of old tin cans. She became the town’s most distinguished citizen.

Joe Brooks, one of the most successful ‘packers,’ owned 335 mules and raked in $5,000 a day –far more than most men earned in a year. In keeping with the nature of the town, he wasn’t overly scrupulous; if he was hauling equipment for one customer and got a more tempting offer, he’d simply dump the first shipment alongside the trail.

Most of the pack animals were broken-down horses that would have been lucky to survive the trek under the best of conditions. Overburdened as they were by miners desperate to get their outfits over the pass as quickly as possible, they didn’t stand a chance. Before long, the trail was christened ‘Dead Horse Trail’ after the many carcasses that littered it. As writer Jack London described it, ‘The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps.’  If a horse gave out in the middle of the narrow trail, no one bothered to drag it away; it was simply ground into the earth by the endless parade of feet and hooves.  Jack London’s inspiration for famous works come from here.

For the entrepreneur, there was money to be made here, too. Several roadhouses went up along the trail, including the grandly named Palmer House at the foot of the pass. Most were no more than large tents or ramshackle wooden structures, but they offered hot meals and a place to sleep, even if it was only on the floor. On the worst stretches of trail, an enterprising man could bridge a mudhole with logs and charge a fee to each miner who crossed. At the pass itself, several men laboriously chopped 1,500 steps in the hard-packed snow, then collected so much money in tolls that the route was dubbed ‘the Golden Stairs.’

Alex McDonald, a Nova Scotian whose shy, awkward manner belied a canny business sense, bought up the claims of discouraged miners and hired others to work them for him. He earned $5 million and the title ‘King of the Klondike’ without ever lifting a pick or shovel.

The ‘Queen of the Klondike,’ Belinda Mulroney, took another route to riches. She arrived in the Klondike in the spring of 1897 with $5,000 worth of cotton clothing and hot-water bottles, which she sold for $30,000. Next, she opened a lunch counter and, with the profits, hired men to build cabins that sold before the roofs were on. A successful roadhouse near the gold fields followed. But that was not ambitious enough for Mulroney. She went on to build the grandest hotel in the Klondike–the Fairview, which boasted brass beds, fine china, cut-glass chandeliers and chamber music in the lobby, even electricity generated by the engine of a yacht anchored in the harbor.

For a brief time, Belinda and Big Alex became partners in a scheme to salvage the cargo of a wrecked steamboat. Crafty Alex got to the wreck first and made off with the most valuable supplies, leaving Belinda only some cases of whiskey and a large inventory of rubber boots. ‘You’ll pay through the nose for this,’ she promised, and, as usual, she got her way. When the spring thaw turned the ground in the gold fields to mush, McDonald was in dire need of boots for his men, and Mulroney was happy to provide them at $100 a pair. Mulroney went on to become the only women manager of a mining company, the largest in Yukon Territory.

Gary L. Blackwood, August 1997 

Welcome to Dawson City

Sign seen as I left Dawson

Poet Robert W Service’s cabin (aka Bard of the Yukon, 1874-1958)

Built 1899 of local spruce logs and a sod roof

Typical 1900s residence that he rented for 3 years (1909-1912)

Robert W. Service is said to have lived 13 years of divine loafing.  He failed upwardly all the time.  Folks called him a verse writer rather than a poet, a rhyme rustler, a balladeer on the loose, and that he preferred the approval of barmen rather than professors.  He wrote backfilled rhymes, meaning that he started with the last word first.  He was a hobo for two years and worked in a bank briefly.

Inside his cabin:

‘Rebuffs are only rungs in the ladder of success’

Robert Service wrote: The cremation of Sam McGee

The Spell of the Yukon, The shooting of Dan McGrew

He had also been a war correspondent

Vintage false façades clearly seen here

Still in high demand location for movies and TV shows

Work with what you find

Colorful residents, colorful buildings

Streets are nearly always muddy and elevated

wooden boardwalks ease the difficult and slippery slog

Dawson City has been flooded 22 times since the townsite was established on a low-lying floodplain in 1896.  A new two-meter dike built in 1987 has helped keep the town flood-free.  The streets, however, always seem to be muddy, possibly from the permafrost below.

St Andrews Church, 1901

More than half of Dawson City is built on permafrost

that is about 60-meter thick and many thousands of years old.

as it melts, buildings lean

Some refer to it as ‘elegant decay’.

Technically speaking, permafrost occurs when the ground remains at or below zero degree Celsius (32F) for a minimum period of two years.  The soil above the permafrost that freezes and thaws every year is called the active layer.

When ice melts, the ground loses volume and the surface drops.  Buildings tilt and lean as their foundations sink into the ground, road buckles, and water pipes snap.  In Dawson City, steps are taken in new construction to ensure that the ground remains frozen.  Front street is paved with light color asphalt to minimize solar absorption, sensors are installed all around town to measure ground temperature, and many buildings are on special wooden frames, keeping open space under the structure so their heat doesn’t reach the ground below.

Nicknamed the Kissing Buildings

Kept this way on purpose to show damage

caused by melting of permafrost

Built 1901, how much longer will they ‘stand’?

An interesting fact I never thought of before:  There is no permafrost under the Yukon River because the river water doesn’t freeze and warms the ground underneath. 

On Hunter Creek (part of the Klondike goldfield) miners recently exposed a swath of frozen mud and ice that is about 740,000 years old, the oldest ice ever uncovered in North America.

Sternwheeler graveyard along the river

Over 250 sternwheelers plied the Yukon River

from 1860-1950, increasing in size as the years went by.

Another look at one of the old sternwheeler skeletons

Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall.  ‘For a ‘whooping good time, visit us at Canada’s first (and friendliest) licensed gambling hall and experience a night at the saloon just like the original stampeders.’  Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall was first opened in 1971 by the Klondike Visitors Association, making it Canada's oldest casino.  Patrons are treated to a daily vaudeville show inspired by one of Dawson's most famous dance hall stars from the Gold Rush era, Gertie Lovejoy, who had a diamond between her two front teeth. 

Gertie's is unique among casinos in Canada, as it is the only one where patrons can gamble, drink alcohol, and watch live entertainment in the same room, and is the only casino located in northern Canada. It is still operated by the Klondike Visitors Association, a non-profit organization. Revenues are re-invested back into the town to help preserve historic sites, produce local events, and to promote the Klondike.  Patrons play with Gertie’s chips. 

Interesting facts:  

• During the Gold Rush of 1897, potatoes were so highly valued for their vitamin C content, that miners traded gold for them.
• The books ‘Call of the Wild’ and ‘White Fang’ by Jack London, were both about the Klondike Gold Rush era.  Mr. London guided boats through Miles Canyon (see picture below) and White Horse Rapids before he went back to California, afflicted with scurvy.  
• A person who lives in Dawson City through the winter is called a Sourdough (Sour on the country, no dough to leave).  
• Actresses like Klondike Kate and Mae Field entertained in theatres, saloons, and dance halls; they were embraced by polite society. Their income, at roughly $200 per month, exceeded the earnings of Sam Steele and his Mounties. 
• In Dawson City, they celebrate the Thaw Di Gras Spring Carnival with many outdoor activities to help pass the time before the river is open to traffic again, precursor of a very welcome summer.  
• Post office was not very well designed, it had 12-foot ceiling and north facing windows, using 200 cords of wood to heat in winter, a normal house would only use 4-5 cords.
• They still use general delivery in Dawson City.  Even Amazon has an * for deliveries there.
• 911 calls only started in 2017, creating addresses for the new system.
• Beware of men with long fingernails when weighing gold dust, they can hide a lot of gold dust there.  One sneeze and one can lose $50 worth of gold!  
• Gold dust fell through the cracks in the wood floors – many people went looking under the floorboards after the rush.
• A cubic yard of gravel had to have at least $2.50 worth of gold in it to be sluiced to pay for labor, before meeting other costs.  A rocker (person who washed gravel) could wash 20-25 cubic yards in a 10-hour day.
• Gold is 19 times heavier than water.  88% if all gold mined in the Yukon comes from the Dawson area.  In 1904, the Klondike was the largest gold producer in Canada and the fourth in the world.
• Mammoth ivory, preserved for millennia beneath the earth, has been found in this region.  Along with gold, it is used in making jewelry.
• No bank robberies ever happened here
• Gold claims only given to white men hence why it is so difficult to know more about the women of the Klondike even though they were there as well.
• Only 8-10% were women. 

While there were many thousands of men in the Klondike during the height of the Gold Rush, there were hundreds of women who worked just as hard, shared the same primitive living and working conditions, and who adapted to and coped with the same hardships.

The lives of Klondike women were, in fact, more difficult and complicated than those of their male counterparts, because of what we now consider to be 'old-fashioned' social customs of the late Victorian era, customs that dictated repressive ideas of 'appropriate' female behavior. Men who doubt this should be made to hike the Chilkoot Trail in high-heeled boots, corsets, bloomers, ankle-length skirts, and blouses and jackets with leg-o-mutton sleeves. And don't forget your bonnets, guys.  They also cared for the kids.  More than a few women discarded their impractical female apparel and put on men's clothes for the trip, an act considered immoral. Other women dressed and acted like men because they thought they'd be safer on the trails.

The best word here goes to Flora Shaw (Lady Lugard), who, at age 45, joined the stampede in 1898 as part of her job--colonial editor of the London Times. Years before, Shaw had visited Gold Rush camps in South Africa and Australia. After traveling from London to Dawson City and experiencing the Klondike Gold Rush for herself, she returned to London. In an address to the Royal Colonial Institute in London, Shaw noted that "the question of whether women that men respected could be brought into that country was one of perpetual discussion." By respectable women, Shaw meant wives.  Shaw, in fact, encouraged women to go to the Klondike to aid in the development of the Yukon. She capped her argument with a strong declaration of the role of women in such a venture, stating that "...in the expansion of the Empire, as in other movements, man wins the battle, but woman holds the field." 

Paradise Alley with 70 small prostitute cabins,
They were thought of as white slaves,

women of negotiable affections or languorous lilies of love.

University of Washington Library

Before I left Dawson City, I was having breakfast at a small restaurant and two local ladies sitting next to me were discussing a recent theft in town.  Their comment to me was that if someone steals in Dawson City, the town is so small they openly discuss who they think did it…  And, indeed, they were discussing who they thought the perpetrator might have been.  Undeniably a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business but it’s also part of the survival scheme – they are there to help each other in times of need.   

SS Klondike, the original Yukon River Sternwheeler

What took 36 hours going downstream, took 4-5 days going upstream

So strong, at times it pushed 3 barges

Would make 52 stops for wood along the way

Launched 1929, restored 1937-40

Wood camps were located at frequent intervals along the river to keep the boiler fires burning.  A boat fighting the Yukon’s current could burn two cords of wood per hour.  Some passengers helped with feeding the hungry beast in lieu of paying for a ticket to board.

SS Klondike, now resting in Whitehorse

It could carry 300 tons yet only drew 1.3 meters (4 feet)

Struck river reef in 1936

Took 8 tons of slightly dampened Palmolive Princess soap flakes

to move her steel cradle on wooden skids to this location

Took 12 people, 3 weeks, and 3 tractors

Whitehorse named after rapids on the Yukon River which resemble flowing manes of charging white horses before it was dammed. It is known as Canada’s driest city and the city with the least air pollution in the world (Guinness Book of Records).  Capital and only city in the Yukon, it is the largest city in northern Canada.  Last Census shows 25,000 people or 70% of the population of the Yukon lives here.  Whitehorse started off as a transportation hub during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898.

On May 23, 1905, a small fire in the barber shop of the Windsor Hotel got out of control when the fire engine ran out of water, spreading throughout the city and causing $300,000 in damage, though no lives were lost. The White Horse Restaurant and Inn was among the buildings destroyed, after its co-founder Frederick Trump, the grandfather of Donald Trump, had sold his shares and left the city. Recognize these names, hummmm…

“Sunk deep in pioneer history, dotted with fascinating communities.”

Unknown

Miles Canyon

Most dangerous obstacle on the Yukon River until dammed in 1959

Basaltic columnar lava 110 meters thick, only see top portion

Many use portage to bypass it

On the Klondike Highway

Road between Skagway and Whitehorse

This area is more sparsely treed with a sometimes-eerie sub-alpine landscape of lakes and stunted trees.  This transition of vegetation between the treed lower elevations and the true alpine above the tree line is sometimes referred to as moonscape.  It is a very fragile environment with little soil over rocks that gets covered with 24 feet a snow in the long winter.

Klondike Highway view

Fire across the lake, one of many

I came across that summer

Carcross

Affectionately called ‘The smallest desert in the world’

Who would expect desertic sand dunes this far north?  Carcross (short for Caribou Crossing) looks like a desert but it is really the remains of an ancient lake.  If it were a real desert, it would have a hot, dry climate.  The Carcross dunes are the results of a glacial process.  10,000 years ago, glaciers retreated creating some lakes as deep as 300 meters.  Layers of sand and silt which had been trapped in the glaciers settled to the bottom of these lakes in deep layers.  Lake Bennet is full of sand and its currents keep bringing more sand to Carcross.

Ever wonder how ripples in the sand are created?  Sand comes in particles of many sizes.  Most sand is light enough for the wind to move, but too heavy to be carried very far.  The wind pushes grains of sand and they bounce along the surface, a process called saltation.  The average distance of the bounce is the width between the crest of two ripples….

Many Caribous used to come through here.  Caribous love to use ice patches and glaciers to escape insects and heat.  With climate change and fewer patches available during their migrations, they are assaulted by insects which can suffocate them.  Climate change is also filling the open alpine meadows with shrubs, creating more habitat for moose but reducing sheep range.

‘To see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower;

hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.’

William Blake

The huge herd of tens of thousands of caribous after which Carcross was named was decimated during the Klondike Gold Rush.  A recovery program has slowly raised that number back to 450.  Their thundering migration now a mere whisper.

View of Lake Bennet and Montana Mountains

from the Carcross sand dunes

One of four such places in the area

The Carcross area was part of Skookum Jim's land. Carcross/Tagish people remember his deal with the railway, probably the first land claims deal of its kind in the territory. After gaining fame for his role in the discovery of gold in the Klondike, Jim gave permission for the railway to build across his land in exchange for jobs for people in his community.

One of the few left with money, Skookum Jim died wealthy and left a large sum of money to a trust established to improve the health and education of First Nations people in the Yukon.  

Home to the Carcross/Tagish First Nation

In 1973, Elijah Smith and a delegation of Yukon Chiefs, including Don Johnson of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation went to Ottawa to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada.  Armed only with their determination, courage and the historic document ‘Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow’, they were able to convince the Federal Government to begin a negotiation process for a modern-day treaty, the first in Canada. 

It was finalized twenty years later in 1993 and paved the way for long sought-after self-governing of lands, resources, justice, education, heritage and culture.  They considered the key achievement to be their authority to educate their youth.  The Yukon has 14 First Nations groups speaking eight different languages.  They make 24-25% of the population.

Emerald Lake
Green color created by marl on the lakebed (white calcium carbonate clay)

Comes from dissolved limestone
14,000 years ago, retreating glaciers deposited the needed ingredients

to create this beautiful color

Watson Lake Sign-Post Forest

Oldest most extensive site of its type

It represents the longstanding tradition of

leaving one’s mark

Started in 1942 by Carl Lindley, a homesick soldier from Illinois while working on the construction of the Alaska Highway.  People from all over the world continue to add signs connecting their faraway homes to the town of Watson Lake.

Number of signs over the year – now nearly 84,000

Below is a bit more information on the importance of salmon, not only for humans but for a whole ecosystem:

There is something special on salmon skin that feeds the forest when decomposing. 

 

October’s Pacific rains in British Columbia create prime spawning conditions for wild Pacific salmon. It’s also a banner month for the towering trees of British Columbia’s coastal temperate rainforests. However, you might be surprised that it’s the salmon, not the rain, that make it such a great month for the trees.

This story of salmon, bears and trees illustrates the interconnected web of life, and has aptly spawned the name “The Pacific salmon forest”.

Every autumn millions of chum, pink, chinook, and coho salmon are leaving the Pacific Ocean to swim up rivers along the British Columbia coast. Waiting alongside these rivers are thousands of bears poised to fatten up for their winter hibernation. Each bear carries hundreds of kilos of fish out of the streams and into the forest to consume. With the abundance of fish, the bears can afford to eat only their favorite parts of the fish, the eggs (or roe), brain, skin and back muscles, before they move on to the next fish. Sometimes they eat as little as five per cent of the fish, leaving the rest to decompose on the forest floor. Many other animals feast on these rests: wolves, mink, marten, river otters, eagles, gulls, ravens, crows, shorebirds, etc. Bears and other mammals wander into the forest, and birds shelter in the trees, and they all leave nutrient-rich droppings as well as uneaten parts of salmon, which decay and fertilize the land .That’s where the relationship between the bears and the fish connects to the trees.

Tree growth in coastal rainforests is limited by the availability of the element nitrogen. The fish left behind by the bears are packed with nitrogen, which fertilizes the trees and helps them grow to their impressive size.

Several years ago, scientists, led by Dr. Tom Reimchen of the University of Victoria, tracked the nitrogen uptake in coastal forests and measured up to 80% of their nutrients as salmon-based. They did this by following the nitrogen isotope 15, which is found almost exclusively in marine environments. It turns out that Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and western red cedar owe a good deal of their girth to the nutrients carried from the ocean by salmon, then into the forest by the bears.

Just like there’s more to the birds and the bees than what they do with flowers, there’s much more to this story, too. Millions of insects also eat the leftover salmon, bolstering invertebrate populations, which in turn feed birds and other small forest creatures. Dr. Reimchen’s team found insects with more than half their nitrogen coming from an ocean source, and a greater abundance and variety of both insects and plants near salmon bearing streams.

Gulls, wolves, eagles, osprey, crows, pine martin and dozens of other species also take advantage of the rich bounty of salmon. Not a shred of nitrogen goes unused by nature; even the bears’ urine casts another shower of nitrogen into the forest ecosystem.

The rivers themselves distribute the salmon further. Remnants of salmon float downstream, where they are eaten by aquatic insects and smaller fish, finally drifting to the river’s mouth. In the estuary, crabs and other marine scavengers devour the final remnants. Just as the Pacific Ocean doesn’t end at its shores, the salmon forest doesn’t end at the edge of the wood. You can find it in the birds flying by your window, and in the breath you just took.

In a land of thin, relatively poor soils, these nutrient packets, brought from the ocean by salmon, are important to the life of the forest. Sitka spruce near salmon streams grow much faster than those on streams without salmon. Bears help to spread one of their own important foods, by carrying the seeds of berries they have eaten, and then depositing those seeds on the forest floor. Not only do the bear’s droppings deposit the berry seeds, but they simultaneously nourish the new seedlings that will grow into berry-producing bushes.

Adapted from: David Suzuki foundation 2012

And some information about a very important oil to the natives, Eulachon Oil:

Eulachon oil was so important to the natives that they followed a special trading route for this product.  It was called the grease route or grease trail that went from Alaska to as far as Montana and California. 

Eulachon is an oil distilled from small herrings.  It was transported in cedar boxes and some of these were found dating back as far as 10,000 years ago. 

The grease from these small fish could be traded for furs, copper, and obsidian, among other things. The Stó:lō people of the Fraser River simply ate the fish, either fresh or smoked, but the people of the interior used the oil as a condiment, similar to butter, and in various other ways.

Salvation fish:  In lean years, the arrival of the eulachon meant the difference between life and death.  Aboriginal cultures developed a process to extract that fish oil to create a vitamin-rich grease that resembles vegetable shortening, though with a malty, fishy flavor that is, an acquired taste, and that could be transported or stored without spoiling.

Greatest numbers in Columbia River.  Some scholars argue that the word ‘Oregon’ is derived from a pronunciation of the word ‘eulachon’ used by aboriginal traders as they told European explorers of the riches to be found in the West.

Creamy as lard when cool and light as olive oil when warmed, the grease is rich in vitamin A and a significant source of vitamins E and K, along with healthful fatty acids. It's potent fuel for the body: A single tablespoon provides more than 125 calories, and just five ounces, an amount still commonly eaten by Nisga'a elders today, supply half an adult's recommended daily energy intake.

Talk to men and women raised in grease-making families, and you'll soon hear too of fevers broken or earaches cured with a dose of eulachon oil. The grease is also a notorious laxative and a topical treatment for skin conditions, no surprise, given that eulachon are high in squalene, a chemical found in human skin and used in the production of moisturizers.

During the cooking, the eulachon oil separates to form a transparent surface layer. Strained into buckets, the grease ranges in color from palest gold to nearly black, depending on how long it's been fermented.

Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus, means roughly ‘oily fish of the Pacific’) is the official name for a fish that also goes by many others – smelt, ooligan or hooligan, and candlefish, to name a few – and has played a large role in the diets, culture and commerce of the people of the Pacific Northwest since long before Lewis and Clark first arrived.

Now endangered, the name ‘candlefish’ stems from this quality - if dried and strung on a wick, the fish can be burned as a candle.  Now endangered.

Watson Lake, home of the Northern Light Center

A science center dedicated to aurora borealis, fun and instructive visit

But the ones outside just as magnificent

There are just so many things to discover, understand and appreciate.  I could’ve stayed here for many more months but it’s time to return to the US via Alberta, Montana and Idaho.  See you there in my next post.