Dawson City is my favorite town on this trip so far. It has the look of the old west to it. You could easily believe that the old TV series “Northern Exposure” was based on this town. (It was not.) It is large enough to keep your interest, but small enough that within a short time you can easily find your way around without a map.

The only paved street is the main street in town. Instead of paved sidewalks they have boardwalks. The town is trying to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so the exterior of all new construction must be true to the period.

Facts about Dawson City:
Water:
• Located at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers.
• Suffered 22 floods since 1989, the worst being in 1979.
• In 1987 they built a large dike and there hasn’t been a flood since.
• Since 1896 the town’s people have held a lottery to guess the exact minute the ice on the river will break.
Gold:
• Gold was discovered in 1896.
• Population 1897, before the gold rush – 500.
• Population 1898, the start of the gold rush – 30,000.
Foundation:
• More than half the town is build on permafrost about 60 meters thick,
• To ensure the ground remains frozen, new buildings sit up on wooden cribbing so heat will not be transferred to the ground. Also, Front Street, the main street in town, is paved with a light-colored asphalt to minimize solar absorption.

Parks Canada is preserving and restoring many of the buildings as part of the Dawson Historical Complex. We purchased tickets for 3 of the guided tours that Parks Canada runs and got tickets for the 4th one free with our Parks Canada passes.

We first toured the S.S. Keno. It is the smallest of the 250 riverboats that were built to run between Dawson City and Whitehorse. Of the 250 built, only two remain, the S.S. Keno (smallest) and the S.S. Klondike (largest), which we had toured in Whitehorse.

While Jay got a haircut, I checked out some of the shops. The name of one shop intrigued me. It was a jewelry store called “Nugget and Ivory”. “Ivory”, I questioned, envisioning elephants. Inside the shop, the clerk explained to me that the ivory was from the woolly mammoth. The tusks or pieces of tusks are uncovered in the process of dredging for gold, all totally legal.

Later in the afternoon, we joined the “Then and Now Walking Tour.” Two “interpreters” lead the tour. One portrayed the founder of the town. He talked about life in the town during the gold rush years as we toured the Red Feather Saloon, the Old Post Office, and the BNA Bank. The other interpreter has been a full time resident in Dawson since the early seventies. She told us about life in Dawson since the seventies until now.

Early evening, we went out to dinner at Klondike Kate’s. Jay had his usual burger and I tried the fish (char) tacos. It was the first time I had tried char. It wasn’t bad!