Ghosts of the Klondike

Monday, August 6, 2007

DAWSON CITY, YUKON — In other places where people have rushed in during boom times and then moved on, towns have often languished or even vanished completely. That is not the case for Dawson City. It continues to be a vibrant, active town, and the region around it continues to produce the gold today that brought about its birth over a hundred years ago.
The effort that has gone into preserving its historic appearance — leaving the streets as dirt roads, requiring buildings to resemble the original architecture, edging the streets with boardwalks instead of sidewalks — has kept the Klondike spirit alive and continues to charm visitors, some of whom come and never leave, or keep coming back.
Rabbit Creek was the original name of the stream where George Carmack and his two Aboriginal companions struck gold. They renamed it Bonanza Creek, and today Val and I drove up to the spot where it all happened, and where the creek still flows. It’s a pretty, quiet spot today. We are almost at the 111th anniversary of this event — which occurred on August 17, 1896. (We will have to miss the Discovery Days celebrations that take place every year around that date.)
We also drove up the hill that overlooks Dawson City and stopped to look at the cemeteries that are situated on both sides of the road above the town. There are several different areas — for the Catholics, the Jewish cemetery, the Yukon Order of Pioneers, and one special area for the NWMP, RNWMP and RCMP. There were 19 graves there, with members in their twenties and thirties whose deaths dated as far back as 1902. They are nicely set out with a white fence around them, and each one has a white headstone and white gravel with a neat wooden border.
In other sections, there were headstones made of wood that had almost weathered away, and some graves had no stones at all; only a raised mound of earth remained. Tuberculosis and typhoid claimed the lives of many early residents of Dawson, and further back we could see dozens of crosses that marked their graves. The breeze whispered through the trees and tugged at the wisps of seeds that are forming on the fireweed, now that summer is past its peak.
We strolled along the walking path near the cemeteries that brought us to a viewing stand where we could see the Klondike River down below. It’s a clear river that joins the Yukon River a short distance further on, and you can see the difference in colour between it and the silty brown Yukon.
After our hilltop visit, we hurried back to the Palace Grand Theatre to see a short video about Martha Black, the feisty "first lady" of Dawson, wife of Commissioner George Black, who left her first husband and high society life, toiled up the Chilkoot Trail with her brother in search of adventure and gold, gave birth to a son in the midst of the Gold Rush camps, and eventually became the chatelaine of the Commissioner’s residence. Martha insisted on entertaining all the residents of Dawson in their lovely home, and not just the well-to-do — which endeared her to all the local "sourdoughs", as old hands of the Klondike were called. She was a fascinating lady who eventually became a member of Parliament, and died in 1957.
We then joined a walking tour of Dawson City with a costumed Parks Canada employee named Jay, who took us inside historic buildings such as the post office and the Bank of North America, and pointed out the hotels, bawdy houses and other establishments and related their history. Our last stop was a photo display showing the transition of Dawson from a haphazard tent city to the more genteel community of its heyday. We learned interesting details, such as the habit the miners had of growing bushy beards in summer to fend off mosquitoes, and shaving them off in winter so they wouldn’t crust up with frost and stick to their blankets overnight!
Our sojourn into the past was completed after dinner when we went to see Diamond Tooth Gertie and her dancing girls in the gambling hall, where one-armed bandits and gaming tables still do a brisk business. Gertie planted red-lipped kisses on the bald heads of embarrassed patrons during her show, and dressed a couple of other game gentlemen in ruffled skirts and feather headdresses to join the girls on stage! Their reward was a lacy garter each, which they were invited to remove from the shapely legs of two dancers to take home as souvenirs.