Dawson City – The Klondike Goldfields

Rosie and The Operator are off to explore the valley and creeks of The Klondike Goldfields that Dawson City is famous for, when, back in 1896 a chance discovery of gold in Rabbit Creek, later to be renamed Bonanza Creek, led to one of the biggest gold rushes in North American history.

The few original miners who made the discovery and were already on the scene staked every creek in the Klondike River Valley and essentially, because of the remoteness of Dawson, had a one year head start before the outside world learnt of the strike when some of the newly rich miners arrived by boat in Seattle and told of ‘a ton of gold’ to be had.

From there, the stampede started and sleepy Dawson, a tiny settlement on the Yukon river inhabited by native Indians and a handful of European prospectors was never the same again.

1 million people made plans to go to the Klondike. One hundred thousand actually set off and about thirty thousand actually made it to the fields.

Dawson steadily grew throughout the winter of 1897, but once the Yukon River thawed in May of 1898 boats and rafts arrived in the hundreds. It was a sight to be seen, apparently, the waterways were choked with boats and handmade rafts, this tiny town literally boomed with in a few months to having 10, 000 inhabitants with more on the way!

For those arriving by boat on the West Coast from California, San Francisco and Seattle they landed in Skagway, Alaska, the closest land point to Dawson and had to brave the icy Chilkoot Pass over the mountains to get into Canada and the Klondike. Gold seekers were required by Canadian authorities to pack and carry one ton of goods over the Chilkoot Pass, goods required and needed to survive once they got to their destination because of the lack of infrastructure.

The list of goods required for each man included, 400 pounds of flour, 100 pounds of beans and 100 pounds of sugar to name a few. The average man took 40 trips to haul his supplies over the pass.

That’s 2600 exhausting miles on the icy trail, up the golden stairs at the summit through blizzards and sub zero temperatures. Most gold seekers took three months to complete this task at a cost of about a $2000 outlay….before even securing a claim and finding any gold!

So many arguments happened over the staking of claims in the Klondike. The Canadian government sent in a surveyor who was hired to officially measure and record all of the claims, settling any disputes as he went.

On Bonanza Creek one of the richest rivers in the Klondike, a twelve foot discrepancy was found. This tiny wedge of land, that didn’t measure up was technically ‘nobody’s‘ so one of the surveyors bought it. He totally hit the jackpot and managed to mine over half a million dollars in gold from a twelve foot wide wedge of river!

Driving into the heart of this original mining zone it is like a lunar landscape.  On each side of the road high piles of earth sit in lumpy mounds everywhere, with nature slowly reclaiming its turned over land and small scrubby bushes starting to grow back. It is actually incredible to think that every inch of this land was turned over at some point in the pursuit of gold.

Along the unsealed road are interpretive signage and displays that allow you to learn about the early years of the Gold Rush, where the big claims were, stories of the miners and how the mining practices very quickly evolved from a gold pan to sophisticated extraction methods.

This was a typical rocker (below) where you shoveled in the pay dirt, added water and rocked the contraption to sift it and expose the gold. One rocker could wash 19 cubic meters in a ten hour day. This hand mining phase only lasted about three years until 1899. By then the rich ground had been exhausted.

With the main bulk of easy picking gold gone, at this time claims were consolidated into larger blocks and large machinery was employed such as steam shovels and dredges to dig deeper.

Dredge #4 sits like a huge hulking beast in the turned over landscape, it was the biggest single hulled dredge in North America and was built specially as a floating gold digging machine in 1899. It was the size of a football field and eight stories high.

The buckets scoop up the bedrock and bring gravel up to the hopper. Gold is heavy, so gravity sorted it from the waste as it passed through the trommel roller and the sluice.

This dredge processed 1088 metric tones of gravel every hour…240 days a year. The Dredge was so loud that it could be heard 15 kilometers away in Dawson City. When it needed new ground to process it was simply winched forward.  Three other dredges were also in operation on the rivers and creeks of this area during this time.

Dredge #4 worked 40 years on the Klondike River then in the 40s was pulled apart and rebuilt on Bonanza Creek where it worked for another 18 years. She sits today where it was finally switched off in 1959.

The aftermath of dredging. Row upon row of tailings that washed through the dredge and out the other side, these are the shingle piles that totally surround Dawson City and the wider countryside for as far as the eye can see in every direction.  The dredge is such an elegant looking machine, reminiscent of a riverboat, but when you look around at the wide scale destruction of the land this contraption has caused over the course of its work, wow!

How successful was dredging? Over 46 years Dredge #4 recovered 8 metric tonnes of gold which equals $424,000,000.  23 kgs of gold were cleared on average during the peak from the sluices every 3-4 days.

Dredge workers also occasionally found mammoth tusks in the permafrost.  These workers worked in front of the dredge and softened the permafrost with blow torches so that the buckets could scoop this ancient level.  What happened to the tusks? The workers earned extra money by selling them to jewelers in the town.

After the last dredging company left town in the 1960s small family operations have become the mainstay of Yukon Mining. The introduction of tracked equipment, bulldozers and buckets, was a swing back to a smaller scale of mining with even more efficient system of recovering gold.

Mining camps and a variety of portable housing line the roadsides of this area, 90 to 100 families still mine today, a few are even direct decedents of the Gold Rush miners and are still working the same claim.  The mines that are still active are behind chain fences a long way from the road and the sounds of trommels can be heard from a long way away.  Most though are silent and closed already for the winter in anticipation of the snow and frozen ground and will re open again in May.  Long abandoned, modern makeshift accommodation also litters the roadside.

At claim #33 they have a miners cemetery of sorts, most of the machinery that went into this area over time was never bought out when it either wasn’t required anymore or died.

A lot of mining memorabilia has accumulated over time here.  Rosie really enjoyed having a poke around this museum which is open in the summer and tourists are taught how to pan for gold here before they are let loose on Freedom Claim #6 up the river.

Standing here, above the valley on top of the Midnight Dome Lookout, the highest point in Dawson, gazing over the main mining valley that leads to Bonanza Creek and Dawson City.  Rosie thinks its fair to say a lot of blood, sweat and tears have been shed over this land.  Many a man has found his riches and many have also been reduced to rags.  This land holds some great stories and history though of mighty people who have called this remote part of the world home and Rosie was so lucky to have been able to stand here, experience and learn a little of it.

Tomorrow we leave Dawson City and are back on the road travelling The Top of The World Highway and then onto the Alaska Highway back to Whitehorse, on the way we overnight in the small town of Beaver Creek population 115.  Join us on our journey, where we experience four seasons in one day with fog, rain, snow and beautiful landscapes.  Plus our wildlife tally also takes a much needed boost with some roadside companions on the way.

Feel free to check out Rosies further Diary Links on Dawson City.

Dawson City, Canada – Home of The Goldrush

Dawson City, Canada – Sourtoe, Sourdough & Cemeteries