Midnight Dome

Last evening we went on a Yukon River dinner/cruise aboard the Klondike Spirit, a side-wheeler (there is a wheel on each side). The salmon dinner was very good!

This is Yasmin, our host and commentator. She has been living in Dawson City for five years and she had lots to say about living in a frontier town year-round.

On the Yukon River, looking north, toward the Bering Sea.

We passed a First Nations village. There are no roads or driveways. The only way to get into Dawson City is by boat in the summer and snowmobile in the winter.

We turned around to the south and came back toward Dawson City.

Two happy people enjoying the river cruise.

A ship graveyard. There are seven ships that are abandoned here, one in back of the other

A quaint building in town complete with a "living roof".

This morning we joined a Parks Canada walking tour of the historic core of Dawson City. In the Visitor Information Center were moose antlers. The two sets of antlers were found locked together. It did not end well for either moose.

Our guide Sierra was joined by...

another Parks Canada employee, in costume, who played the part of May, a resident of Dawson City.

The beautiful architecture of one of two bank buildings of the Gold Rush era. Since it was around 1900, the architecture is similar to the Providence Public Library.

May talking to us in the Red Feather Saloon.

This building, similar in architecture to the bank building, served as the library. The current library is in the school next door.

May and Sierra in the post office.

After the walking tour we hiked up the mountain behind the city called the Midnight Dome. Just as we reached the top we were greeted by these cheery people, Jamie and Madeline from Prince Edward Island. They, too, had just climbed the hill and asked if they could take our picture because they were impressed that we could make it up this strenuous trail. Madeline is one of 17 children who have scattered all across Canada so they will be traveling as far as Vancouver Island visiting relatives.

Confluence of the Yukon and the Klondike rivers. The Klondike is the dark river on the left.

A view of Dawson City from the Dome. 

Looking north toward the Bering Sea.

The trail down...

through a beautiful stand of Aspen Trees.

At the base of the hill we passed by St. Mary's cemetery.

This plot was poignant...

twin boys.

Interesting contemporary headstone with the man's chainsaw as part of the memorial.

"Heart of a Sourdough" and a gold pan.

One of the homes in town with lovely annual flowers on display.

St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Today's hike:

Length - 4.97 miles

Duration - 5 hours, 19 minutes (including lunch and conversation)

Elevation gain - 1,840 feet, (185 floors on the Fitbit)

P.S. When I asked at the Visitor Information Center, I was told that a former Fire Chief erected the bird houses to attract sparrows that would feast on the mosquitos.

Heart of the Klondike!

Heart of the Klondike! - that would be Dawson City, currently home to 2,000, but in 1898, 30,000 made it the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg. There are 8 National Historic Sites of Canada located in Dawson, including the "Dawson Historical Complex", a National Historic Site of Canada encompassing the entire historic core of the town. Today we visited National Historic Sites in the "Goldfields", just outside the core city.

We toured this huge structure, the grand old Dredge No. 4 National Historic Site, built in 1912 for the Canadian Klondike Mining Co.'s claim on Bonanza Creek. It is the largest wooden hulled bucket line gold dredge in the world - those are white benches at the center of the picture and the place where the tour began.

I knew nothing of "industrial" mining before today's tour, but this huge dredge mechanized "placer" mining. Placer mining means that the gold, in this case, is just loose in the gravel, as opposed to "hard rock" mining where gold is extracted from veins in granite underground. Hard rock mining is what we saw in northern Idaho.

This is Nathaniel, our tour guide.

Most of the machinery used in this dredge was manufactured in Ohio and came by ship to Skagway, by train up the White Pass Rail Road (our trip a few days ago) to Whitehorse, and then traveled by ship up the Yukon River to the Klondike River and then to Bonanza Creek, a feeder creek for the Klondike. All, that is, except this humongous, 14 foot diameter gear. Since there is a 12 foot diameter tunnel along the White Pass RR, this gear had to be shipped up to the Bering Sea and then down the Yukon to Dawson, a long way.

Frederick impressed by the huge machinery. During a flood in 1960, Dredge #4 foundered and remained stuck in the mud for 32 years until the National Government realized its historical significance to the area and began restoring it after it was again "floated." It is now a National Historical Site.

The gear room where all the machinery was controlled.

A mile and a half down the road is another National Historic Site, the Discovery Claim. It was originally staked on August 17, 1896, and is the site of the gold discovery that sparked the Klondike Gold Rush. There is a 0.6 mile walking trail with interpretive panels describing the story of the discovery and the evolution of mining techniques.

We also found two of Parks Canada's red chairs by the shore of Bonanza Creek.

This is a neat map - if you click on it to enlarge it you can see the dates and locations of the major gold strikes.

Along the 8-mile road from town to the goldfields where these colorful birdhouses...

on stilts. I don't know why, but I'll try to find out tomorrow.

Mr. Spock explains the Gold Rush

We were able to begins today's drive with an early stop at the Five Finger Rapids Recreation Site on the Yukon River.

It was called Five Finger Rapids by early miners for the five channels, or fingers, formed by the rock pillars. Just wait, there'll be a better picture down below, but this one give a nice overview from the road.

Stairs (219 steps) and a 1-km trail lead down to a closer view of the rapids. 

This is basically the same picture as above but this one has Frederick in it!

At the end of the trail was a viewing platform and I think you might be able to make out at least a few of the 5 fingers, and rock pillars.

Next we drove to a nice overlook of the Yukon River. Also at the stop was an interpretive sign about Beringia.

Beringia is the land mass stretching from Eastern Siberia through Alaska to the Yukon. During periods of glaciation, the water level of the oceans receded and a landmass formed that allowed species of plants and animals, including man, to cross from Asia to North America. The sign says

 that.... "if you could stand here 15,000 years ago near the end of the last glaciation, the vista would be of a dusty, treeless steppe at the edge of the ice sheet."

On the other side of the road the mountains are nicely rounded.

At last!!! Mr. Spock was able to get out of the car, at the Tintina Trench, which extends hundreds of miles across Yukon and Alaska and is the largest fault in North America.

Beneath the Tintina Trench is a fault line along which the bedrock has shifted a minimum of 280 miles laterally. Mr. Spock explained that some 65 million years ago, the rocks presently beneath Dawson City were adjacent to those of Ross River! About 8 million years ago the earth's crust separated along the fault, creating a wide valley or trench.

Mr. Spock then told us about finding gold. Mineral deposits are a by-product of the plate tectonic forces which shape the continents. When two tectonic plates come together, one is often pushed beneath the other where it melts deep within the earth. Some of the melted rock floats to the surface as lava, while more of it cools within the crust to form granites.

A modern example of this activity is the tectonic plate under the Pacific Ocean which is sliding beneath Alaska. Some of it reappears as Aleutian Island volcanoes. Volcanic rocks and granites are common in the Yukon. Many of them carried gold and other minerals out of the earth. Erosion eventually uncovered the gold-bearing rocks. The gold was washed into the Tintina Trench and buried in river sediments. Tectonic movements, volcanism, glaciation, erosion and sedimentation have combined to bring these gravels and their gold within human reach. It was just a matter of time before they were discovered.

It's simple when Mr. Spock explains it!

Tonight we are in Dawson City RV Park & Campground.