Finishing up the Canadian Gold Trail

Heading north from Whitehorse we hit the remains of the Montague Roadhouse. During the late 1800’s the only form of transportation other than by river was on foot or by horse. Accordingly, distances that could be traveled daily were very limited. Entrepreneurs established roadhouses each some 30 or 40 miles on commonly traveled routes, providing a bed, food and possibly some provisions – and most of all some warm and dry time.

This is all that remains of the Montague Roadhouse. Built at the turn of the century, it was actually built by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway that eventually connected Whitehorse with Skagway Alaska through the White Pass. When we were in Alaska 10 years ago we actually road the historic route from Skagway to White Pass.

We had been to Dawson City back then as well. But its location on the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, surrounded by the high peaks makes it a place worth visiting again. The town itself seems to have changed little. The most prevalent businesses we had frequented were still booming. The town still has no paved streets other than the last mile of the highway, and many of the buildings are very much in decay and unoccupied currently.

The thing that always stuns me about Dawson City is the evidence everywhere of the intense mining at the turn of the century. Dawson City was the epicenter of the late 1800’s gold rush. First mined by hand, then in groups, eventually all the claims were bought up by mining companies and mined using dredges. The dredges would chew up daily what would have taken thousands of men to do and left all tailings in tall mounds that haven’t moved in 120 years. The acre upon acre of tailing mounds may never be dealt with here, unless somehow, they discover an economical way of extracting the fine gold buried in this array of rocks – and there is gold in there they say!

Having been in Dawson City before, we had already visited the home of Jack London, author of Call of the Wild. London had lived in Dawson City as a youth, working the gold fields like all the other hopefuls. He didn’t score any significant gold but did score memories that made for impressive writing later in his life. Almost next door to London lived Robert Service, known as the Bard of the Yukon. Again, we had toured his cabin before, but still sought them both out. They lived close enough that they could have tossed plot ideas to each other.

We finally decided to venture up the Dempster Highway. The Dempster is claimed to be the first highway to travel up north of the Arctic Circle. Lile the Dalton Highway in Alaska that goes from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, the Dempster is unpaved due to the permafrost that would tear apart a paved roadway in no time. Along the way we found Tombstone Territorial Park.

The Dempster runs through beautiful mountain ranges all the way from Dawson City to Inuvik on the Arctic Sea. There is only one small town on this 460-mile dirt highway about half way to Inuvik, Eagle Plains. The highway was named after the famous Yukon Mountie William Dempster who earned renowned for his discovery of the lost patrol.

 In February 1911, Francis Joseph Fitzgerald led a mail patrol from Fort McPherson bound for Dawson City. When they never arrived, Dempster was sent out to investigate and found the bodies of Fitzgerald and his party. It was logged as one of the Yukon’s greatest tragedies. However we discovered another one – since the snow in this area only lifted recently, we assume this semi has been here for months.

Talk to you soon!