Dawson City

Dawson City is a neat little place with boardwalks as sidewalks. The stores along the main drag – Front Street, are set up like as if we were back there during the Gold Rush and many are still the original buildings. The population is around 3400 and the roads are all gravel. Dawson City was known as the Paris of the North back in the days.
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We visited Dredge No. 4 which is a Parks Canada historic site. (Good thing we still had our Parks Canada Discovery family pass from last year, saved us $45!) Dredge No. 4 is 2/3 the size of a football field and 8 stories high. DSC_4475This is the dredge that essentially industrialized gold production in the Yukon. It started operation in 1912 and believe it or not it ran on electricity (920 continuous horsepower) that was powered from the company’s hydro plant on the Klondike River 48 kilometres away.. Today, there are still more than 120+ active mines in the area.

While in Dawson City, we stayed at the Yukon River campground where we had a nice site which was steps from the beach. We had to take a ferry to cross the Yukon River to get there. We saw a paddlewheeler go up and down the river filled with tourists willing to pay a pretty penny to be on a paddlewheeler.. (We were on the SS Klondike in Whitehorse and that was a great experience even though it didn’t move.)
Here’s a pic of Dawson City from the top of the hill, known as the Dome, if I recall correctly
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