The Klondike Loop: Dawson City, Yukon Territory

After leaving Valdez we spent a boring night in Tok, and today we said goodbye to Alaska, bound for Canada’s Yukon Territory.  The stretch of road in between is mostly dirt, but pretty scenic – it’s nicknamed the “Top of the World Highway”.  Road conditions are not the best, though, so it took us nearly 7 hours to drive 185 miles – an average of about 25 mph.  Ugh.

We were road-weary but we had finally reached Dawson City, a boomtown made famous by the Klondike Gold Rush back in the late 1890’s.  Between the years of 1897-99 nearly 100,000 stampeders came here hoping to strike it rich on the Klondike Gold Fields near Bonanza Creek.  For the lucky miners who were able to stake claims on the richest deposits, life was good.  Others weren’t so fortunate.  But the town’s heyday was brief – in 1899 word got out about a gold discovery in Nome, Alaska and two-thirds of the stampeders left Dawson, bound for yet another boomtown.  Ironically, just because the people were gone didn’t mean the gold was gone – gold mining is still one of the town’s major industries (the other is tourism, of course).  The town has managed to preserve or restore many of the old buildings, so it has a very old-timey feel.

Parks Canada maintains many of the historic structures.  We took a walking tour of the town and were entertained by the guide’s stories of what life was like for a town full of miners, mounties, gamblers, dancehall girls, and prostitutes (or, as he phrased it: “languorous lilies of negotiable affection”).

Our guide mentioned that last night was a great night to see the Northern Lights and the clear skies gave us hope that tonight would shape up to be a good night, too.  The only catch is that it’s still light until pretty late in the evening – sunset is around 10pm, but it doesn’t really get dark until around midnight.  So…what’s a good way to stay awake in a turn-of-the-century gold rush town?  Why, head down to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall, of course!

It’s a far cry from Vegas, but by the time the stage show started, the whole place was packed.  I think every single tourist in town was there.  The entertainers perform three different shows nightly.  Despite being exhausted, we hung out at the bar and managed to stay awake until the second show ended around 11pm.  You can only watch so many can-can kicks before all the dance numbers start to look the same.

So we headed back to the van and now have our alarms set to wake us up at 2:30 in hopes of seeing the Aurora Borealis.  Wish us luck!