2016 Aug BC & Yukon 3

Overlooking Dawson City.  I asked mom's permission to take a picture of this cute baby with Dawson City in the background.  What a fun town.  It's where the Gold Rush was in 1898.  Lasted for 3 years.  The population swelled from 300 to 30,000 in just a short time.  Then it was over and the Gold Rush moved to Alaska.  The city has kept the town looking like it was back in 1898.  Roads are all dirt and building codes are strict to keep the exterior of all buildings as close to the period as possible.

So if you don't have a pick up truck to load your camper on, just put it on a trailer.

Below views of Dawson City.

Our tour guide is originally from Montreal, but now lives in Dawson City all year round.  She lives across the Yukon River directly on the other side.  They have to use a generator and bring in their water.  During the winter, they are stranded until the river freezes over, then they can walk over until the ice gets thick enough to drive over.  And she loves it???????

Above is building affected by permafrost.  Permafrost is the frozen ground that lies beneath the top ground.  It stays frozen all the time, but tends to buckle and move around.

They reconstructed this bar from pictures of the original.  It looks exactly the same.

Post office also reconstructed from pictures.  They depended on the postal service to ship their gold.

Picture of Robert Service, the famous author who wrote in prose.  He wrote The Cremation of Sam McGee.   Below is his cabin in Dawson City.

Jack London, who wrote Call of the Wild, also lived in this very humble cabin below in Dawson City.

                                     

Dredge #4 was located in Dawson City.  We took tours of 3 different dredges.  These weighed several ton.  They dug a ditch underneath so that the whole thing would float.  The long arm in front with buckets swung back and forth digging for gold.  Each bucket weighed 600 lbs before picking up the rock.  The rock was carried inside and put through a process to filter out the gold.  The dredges were in operation in the early 1900's until about 1960 when they got too expensive to operate.  They are still mining for gold all through this area, but they carry the rock by truck to the areas where they filter through it and separate the gold.

This is the wench room.  Cliff's trying to figure out what wench operates what.

Gold bars getting ready to be shipped.

Our first sited moose.

                                        Can you imagine traveling through Canada on this?