16.07.2013Dawson City – Gold, Gambling and Girls

On the 17th of August in 1896 George W. Carmack, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie discovered gold in Rabbit Creek (later renamed to Bonanza Creek). With the return of successful prospectors to San Francisco and Seattle this discovery triggered the famous Klondike Gold Rush of 1897.
Dawson City was the center of the Klondike Gold Rush and by 1898 had transformed from a First Nations camp into a thriving city of 40,000.

We only spent few days in Dawson City, but here some of the impressions we gathered:

Many of the old buildings have been restaurated and are used as shops, restaurants or museums.

At the riverside of the Yukon lies the 40m long SS Keno which brought hopeful people and goods to and the gold and despaired people from Dawson City. But only during the ice-free time from May to October!

Overlook of Dawson City and parts of the Yukon river from Midnight Dome (887m).

The monstrous Gold Dredge #4 weighing 2700t was used for extracting the gold. It swam in its own little lake and moved by digging its way through the soil and by that extending the lake to one side, and filling it up on the other with waste-rock.

One of the dredge’s buckets easily scopes several Martinas 🙂

The location of discovery claim where the first gold was found.

The gold-less waste rock piles emitted from the dredge are quite a characteristic sign of where the dredge operated around 100 years ago and are still visible today.

And some slightly more modern equipment:

Equipped with only a gold pan Andy increased our gold-stocks by a few gold flakes 🙂

Dawson’s famous Diamonds Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall:

Guess who had which drink…

Even today Diamond Tooth Gertie Lovejoy puts on a show every night.

With her girls…

But no worries, Martina took the pictures and had a careful eye on Andy 😉

On the outside there was some quite different kind of entertainment, but not bad either!

Enjoying some Dawson City cocktails:

And finally our 12$ campground, which was nice and quiet and perfect for preparing great BBQ meals:

And it’s view on the neighboring Yukon river.