Dawson City



Dawson City is a historical town of 2,270 people (2021) in Yukon. It invites visitors to celebrate its heritage as a late 19th-century gold rush town, with frontier buildings and boardwalks, saloons, and a vintage sternwheeler.

History
In prehistoric times the area was used for agriculture by the Hän-speaking people of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and their forebears. The heart of their homeland was Tr'ochëk, a fishing camp at the confluence of the Klondike River and Yukon River, now a National Historic Site of Canada, just across the Klondike River from modern Dawson City. This site was also an important summer gathering spot and a base for moose-hunting on the Klondike Valley.

The current settlement was founded by Joseph Ladue and named in January 1897 after noted Canadian geologist George M. Dawson, who had explored and mapped the region in 1887. It served as Yukon's capital from the territory's founding in 1898 until 1952, when the seat was moved to Whitehorse.

Dawson City and port of entry Skagway in Alaska were the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush. It began in 1896 and changed the First Nations camp into a thriving city of 40,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted as all but 8,000 people left. When Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population was under 5,000. St. Paul's Anglican Church was built that year, and is a national historic site.

The population dropped after World War II when the Alaska Highway bypassed it 480 km to the south. The economic damage to Dawson City was such that Whitehorse, the highway's hub, replaced it as territorial capital in 1953. Dawson City's population languished around the 600–900 mark through the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen and held stable since then. The high price of gold has made modern placer mining operations profitable, and the growth of the tourism industry has encouraged development of facilities. In the early 1950s, Dawson was linked by road to Alaska, and in fall 1955, with Whitehorse along a road that now forms part of the Klondike Highway.

The City of Dawson and the nearby ghost town of Forty Mile (together with Skagway) are featured prominently in the novels and short stories of American author Jack London, including The Call of the Wild. London lived in the Dawson area from October 1897 to June 1898. Other writers who lived in and wrote of Dawson City include Pierre Berton and the poet Robert Service.

Climate
Dawson City has a subarctic climate. The average temperature in July is 15.7 °C (60.3 °F) and in January is −26.0 °C (−14.8 °F). It experiences a wide range of temperatures surpassing 30 °C (86 °F) in most summers and dropping below −40 °C (−40 °F) in winter.

By car
Dawson City is accessible by Highway 9 (Top of the World Highway), if you are travelling east out of Alaska.

Dawson City can also be reached on Highway 2 (Klondike Highway), if you are travelling north from Whitehorse. About 40 km east Dawson City on Highway 2 it intersects with the south terminus of Highway 5. Highway 5, named Highway 8 in Northwest Territories, connects with Inuvik, and make up the Dempster Highway.

Airport
Dawson City has a small airport for scheduled and chartered flights.

Airline

 * Scheduled flights to Dawson City from Old Crow, Inuvik (1.25 hours), and Whitehorse ( .25 hours).

See
In 2023 the site Tr’ondëk-Klondike was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. It's composed of eight sites, one of which is in the Tombstone Territorial Park and the other seven in and near Dawson City: Dawson City as well as the Native American settlement of Tr’ochëk slightly to the south, Jëjik Dhä Dënezhu Kek’it (Moosehide Village) and Fort Reliance a bit downstream on the right bank of Yukon River, and much further downstream (maybe 70 km as the crow flies), close to each other, the forts Cudahy and Constantine and the Native American sites of Ch’ëdähdëk (Forty Mile) and Ch’ëdähdëk Tth’än K’et (Dënezhu Graveyard).



Do




Go next

 * Drive south for 18 km to Bonanza Creek. This is the place where prospectors found the first piece of gold that kick started the Klondike gold rush. You will also pass through Dredge No. 4, a national historic site, along the way.
 * Tombstone Territorial Park is home to some of the territory's most beautiful mountains.