Back in the late 1800s, Dawson City was the most-populated northern town, the “Paris of the North.” The famous Klondike Gold Rush started in 1896, when gold was found at Bonanza Creek. Within a few years, about 100,000 prospectors, miners, prostitutes, wives, children and others travelled the world, passing frozen rivers and mountains, to settle …
Dredge No. 4 was built in 1912 and operated until 1959. It was designated as a national historic site in 1997.
The Klondike is known for permafrost-distorted buildings. The twisted shapes of older structures inspired the artistic career of Jim Robb — as a young artist he visited Dawson and was gob smacked by what he saw. He turned his amazement into a style and has worked with it ever since, to the delight of us all.There …
Despite iconic images of a solitary miner with a pan or a group of men drifting into a hillside, the dredges of the corporate-mining-era are the main reason that Dawson outlasted the usual boom-and-bust cycle common to gold rush towns.
The Bonanza Creek Road winds through piles of dredge tailings—hills of gravel mounded like ground deposited by a gigantic earthworm—and abandoned, rusting mining equipment. This road was once the life vein of Dawson City. In the mid-20th century, the city was a supply centre for the dredges and the dredging community located at Bear Creek, …
