dare2go

Top of the World Hwy. & Dawson City


Continuation from < Page 1 < !

The scenery past Chicken was fairly similar to what we had been seeing the day before. We made a stop about 20 miles on from Chicken at another dredge - Jack Wade No. 1 - which had been left to rot in Wade Creek. There are dredges and other material left from mining rotting all over the hills here. Nowadays there are strict requirements of miners to rehabilitate the sites, but early last century was a different story. It was far too expensive to remove equipment that was no longer needed and nowhere to take it anyway.
Less than 10 miles further and the road separates again. The left fork, which is the continuation of the Taylor Highway, wends its way to Eagle and the right fork, which we were to follow to the border, becomes Boundary Spur Road at this, the Jack Wade, junction. The Canadian-US border is another 15 miles from there. The further we came the more we felt as though we really were on top of the world. The road followed as closely to the ridgeline as possible, with usually what seemed to be just small hilltops to one side or the other - sometimes both.
We arrived at the border around the middle of the day and were in Dawson City 3 hours later - but we dawdled! We spent considerable time at the last viewpoint in Alaska with its Welcome to Alaska sign. It seemed that almost everybody that crosses the border stops there and we were all chatting to each other about where we'd been and where we were going. It's always great to gather information from people who are coming from where you are heading. There was a quite manic Spaniard on a BMW motorbike who'd ridden from South America. We also talked for quite a while to an American woman who makes her home in Homer, south of Anchorage. She had been to Dawson City and also up to Tombstone Park on the Dempster Highway, so we were really interested to hear what she had experienced, both weather and road wise.
Once we had answered all the inevitable questions at the border, we were actually quite relieved to get onto the Canadian road which is called the Klondike Highway. This relief, because we had read that the road was sealed except for some gravel sections, was short-lived. We actually believe in hindsight that it should have been expressed completely opposite of that. But the road wasn't so bad and the day remained very sunny and mostly clear and the scenery was beautiful. It is very difficult to take photos that really show what we were experiencing. I can only repeat that we really felt like we were indeed driving on the top of the world. We were very happy we had decided to drive this road.
When we arrived in Dawson City, we had to take the ferry over the Yukon River and then we drove directly to the Visitor Information Centre on Front Street. I must say that both on that day and all subsequent visits I found the Centre to be one of the best organised and most helpful information centres we have been in. They gave us as much information as we could handle after a long drive and then sent us away with a few handouts to consider what we might like to do whilst here. We went straight to the Dawson City RV Park to cook, shower and rest, but the little we saw of the town on the way there made a good first impression. The Park is not a very pretty place but we had electricity, a $2 for 9 minutes shower and wifi internet access. It is right on the highway about 2 km south of town next to two other RV Parks. But the road is not really a major highway so it was a fairly quiet night except for campers getting up early to leave.
We took our time packing up and leaving the RV Park on Friday morning because it was raining again, and continued to do so the whole day. We had decided to stay a few days in Dawson City but to stay at the Government Campground on the other side of the river where the surroundings are a little more salubrious and hopefully it is quieter. Sometimes it is necessary to stay at a Park where electricity is available to give the camper battery a good charge, and it is not really pleasant using composting toilets, or pit toilets, or (as the Canadians so quaintly call them) outhouses continually. Sometimes you just want a flushing type and a wash basin and a paper towel! But when the price you pay is a campground that looks like a parking lot, outhouses start to look much more bearable.
Our first stop was the Dänojá Zho Cultural Centre which depicts the heritage of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, the local First Nation people. We had to rush a bit to get there because the centre was closing at midday on this particular Friday, and is not open on the weekends. There is a short film about their culture and very interesting exhibits. It is encouraging to see that the local native people are protecting their cultural heritage and fostering it in their young people.
After that we went across the street to the visitors centre to purchase tickets for a couple of tours and also entry to the museum. A lot of Dawson City's historical buildings are under the control of Parks Canada and they run guided tours and other programmes for visitors. They also provide a good deal on 3 or 5 of these tickets. We had decided that we would like to take the Walking Tour - but only if it was better weather - and the tour of Dredge No. 4, as well as visiting the museum. So we bought a 3 ticket pack and put them away for a hopefully sunnier Saturday!
Dawson City is a product of the gold rush of 1897 and the next couple of years on the Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike which meets the Yukon at Dawson. After the first rush was over and the bulk of the miners moved on to Alaska and the next big strike, the government gave strong support to develop the town's infrastructure. Several buildings were erected at this time (the early 1900s) which still stand today. They are working hard to protect their history and it works well. Unlike Barkerville, which seemed a bit like a theme park, this town is very much home to the people who live here. But there is a strict building code which means that old houses are usually restored and new houses are built to look like old houses which have been restored, and sometimes even the locals don't know one from the other! The roads are still unpaved and the footpaths are all boardwalks. It has a very comfortable feel to it, even in pouring rain, when most of the locals are sensible enough to be wearing their rubber boots!

Monday, 28 August 2006, Dawson City, YT
After a coffee and pie at Klondike Kate's - a restaurant in one of the original buildings - we went to the Jack London Interpretive Centre. Jack London is a famous American writer - author of such books as White Fang and The Call of the Wild. He spent some time here in the Klondike during the gold rush and it is a commonly held belief that his experiences at that time had a lot to do with making him the writer he was. The Interpretive Centre was set up because of the work of a local writer named Dick North, who spent a considerable amount of time researching London's time here. There is a very interesting talk given each afternoon about Jack London's life and also how the centre came into being. There is also a cabin which is a replica of, and constructed from, logs of a cabin where London lived in 1897. Only part of it was used in this cabin, the rest in another replica which stands in Oakland, California - London's hometown.
The weather had not improved when we left Jack London's cabin so we caught the ferry and settled into a campsite over the river for the night. Saturday dawned grey and foggy, but it wasn't really raining. The sky appeared to be lighter so we had hope that it may clear up. We drove out to Dredge No. 4 which is about 13 km from town. This dredge was refloated after being sunk in a pond on the Bonanza Creek for a number of years. Parks Canada has made considerable effort to restore the dredge and now have interpretive tours of the inside. We found it very interesting to walk around inside with Kevin and really come to understand how these monsters worked. They literally turned the river upside down to get to the layer of earth that had the gold in it. The Bonanza does not really look like any sort of river these days - more like a continuous pile of gravel!
We returned to town and the sun was finally making a showing. After a quick lunch we joined a walking tour of the town conducted by Anna, an employee of Parks Canada. It was a very pleasant 90 minute walk around the town, with a lot of information about the life during and after the gold rush. We were also able to go inside the Post Office and The Bank of British North America. Both of these buildings have been restored and furnished with original furniture and equipment. The majority of the original buildings date to the early 1900s because there was a fire through the town in 1899 which destroyed many of the gold rush era buildings. After the fire they learnt to use some sort of tin on the outside of the buildings to protect against fire jumping quickly from one building to another. The Bank of British North America is clad completely in corrugated iron. The old library and also the unrestored bank building by the river are both clad in pressed tin, which gives the appearance of a much more substantial façade. A very few of the original pre-fire buildings remain, among them Lowes Mortuary, which began as a log cabin and over the years was added on to with whatever material was currently being used to build. It is like a history of the architecture of the times in one building.
After the walk we had thought to go to the laundromat, but since it was turning into such a lovely day we drove up to Midnight Dome, at an elevation of 2911 feet. It is so named because it is the place to gather at the summer solstice when the sun is still almost up at midnight at this latitude. This hill overlooks the whole valley, giving good views of the town, the Yukon River, its confluence with the Klondike and even the remains of the Bonanza Creek. Some thoughtful resident has built a lovely bench, complete with footrest, at almost the highest point where we sat in the sun for about half an hour chatting with some Swiss fellow travellers. It was a most pleasant interlude and another of those where all the visitors spoke to each other in a friendly fashion and shared travel experiences. Interestingly the language spoken on the Dome that afternoon was almost entirely German!
The laundry did get done and since it was 8.00 by then we decided to be nice to ourselves and have a dinner out. We chose Mama Cita's in Second Avenue. The dining room was packed when we arrived but we got a table and were soon eating a very tasty Salmon dinner. All the food looked really good, including the many pizzas we saw arriving at nearby tables.
We camped over the river again in the Yukon River Government Campground and spent a quiet and very cold night - it was barely 6° when we woke up yesterday (Sunday) morning. Even though there was once again some low cloud and fog, it definitely wasn't raining and it cleared by about 11.00 to an absolutely beautiful sunny day.
We spent a lot of the day wandering around the town and looking at buildings. The beautiful old tin-clad building which is now the Masonic Temple was originally built as a library. Diamond Tooth Gertie's is the only casino in town and it is operated by the Klondike Visitors Association as a non-profit organisation. All the proceeds are invested in visitor services and community attractions. We discovered the Red Leather Saloon on this walk and it is also one of the buildings that Parks Canada has restored outside and in. You can only look through the windows but it is quite impressive. There were also a series of buildings that are not being conserved - rather they are being left to natural decline and the lean resulting from uneven thawing of permafrost is most obvious.
We finally managed to drag ourselves out of the sun and into the Museum at around 3.00 and spent about an hour in there. It covers the history of the area right back to the ice age and is very well done. Upstairs there is a huge collection of household items and tools left by the early gold miners. We were both surprised at how many of them were familiar from out childhoods! But the sun beckoned and we walked some more - to the Commissioner's House and then along Front Street. We were almost back to our truck which we had left parked at the visitors centre when it started to rain. It rained on and off for the rest of the evening, but it produced a beautiful rainbow (there must be gold in 'them there hills').
We decided to stay at the Dawson City RV Park again to put the battery on mains power charging before we drive up the Dempster Highway today. We also wanted to take the opportunity to use the internet. Unfortunately it is not very reliable, but we did get it sometimes. Juergen spent considerable time trying to solve the problem with the pictures on our website, but at this stage it is still a mystery! Now we must do a few things in town and then set out on the next part of our journey which may or may not take us to the Arctic Circle.