I was reminded of Dawson City the other day. There are some places that you really enjoy visiting while at the same time recognizing it’s unlikely you’ll ever go back. In this case, it’s so far from not only where I am, but also anywhere else, that the (expensive) trip would be for that one small place that I could circumnavigate on foot in an hour.
Although it’s a bit under 2,000 people, Dawson is the second largest municipality in the Yukon after the capital Whitehorse, a much bigger city of over 30,000. It still holds onto its gold rush days, which happened right before 1900. Within two years of the gold rush starting, what was a small First Nations camp became a town of about 17,000, then falling to 8,000 the following year and 5,000 three years after that. It must have been a whirlwind.
To this day, mining is a major source of the economy, just obviously way less prominent than 125 years ago. We were lucky to be coming back through town during some kind of mining trade show. We were told that on that day it’s not uncommon for people to pay with gold, and that most of the stores accepted gold as a currency and had a system for weighing it, though we didn’t see it first hand.
We drove from Whitehorse, which already felt a bit like another world but still recognizable with fast food restaurants, including a much discussed Dairy Queen that returned after having disappeared for awhile. On the drive was our first bear sighting, running through a field beside the highway, which at that point was only the second or third bear I’d seen in my life.
After awhile the road stops being paved, but that was nothing compared to the Dempster we later drove.
The most obvious aspect of Dawson City’s uniqueness is its dedication to what it used to be, with old stores from those times like a shell over the stores on the main strip. At times it was hard to figure out what store was what, since often the giant sign on top of it had nothing to do with what was in that store now.
We were lucky to be there on the first weekend of the casino’s seasonal opening, which had a cabaret style dance on stage as the backdrop of a few table games. It was the only time I’ve ever played blackjack where the cards were shuffled by a human instead of a machine. I imagine if someone knew how to count cards it’d be the easiest place to do it.
I didn’t know how to count cards, but I was doing well until I decided to move to the poker table and go all in before closing time, drunk, then following the crowd to the only still open bar. I talked to some people in line who knew someone working there, so we got in for a drink before going back to their hotel until I couldn’t stay awake any longer.
The dirt streets rose to sidewalk planks with brushes on the corners to dust off your boots.
A small forest trail at the back of the town led us to Robert Service’s cabin, which was now a small museum, but it wasn’t open when we were there. We did go to the town museum, which included a room that used to be a functioning courthouse, along with lots of stuff from the gold rush.
One night we drove up the mountain overlooking the town to the midnight dome to see the sunset. One side of the mountain has this barren spot from a landslide that’s a defining landmark the same way the CN Tower would be in Toronto. Looking down, you could see how small the town was amidst the giant landscape, with the late sunset incomparable to any other I’ve seen.
From talking to some people there, it seemed like they were almost jealous of Whitehorse, six hours down the highway and the closest big city, because of all the stuff it had. It’s hard to understand as a traveler, because from my perspective Dawson City was so much more unique, fun, and pretty.
But living so far detached from everything else, must be isolating, and even the comforts of a city that’s rundown would make life easier and perhaps more interesting on the day to day. It was also hard for me to imagine what it must be like there in the winter, in a northern outpost, no sun and no tourism, waiting for the long nights where the town size quadruples full of people just wanting to get drunk.
I was surprised to hear that even there it was hard to find a place to live. Housing shortages exist even in remote places. In Dawson City, since it’s surrounded by a river and a mountain, there isn’t a lot of land to build on that’s in town, which also gives the town a feeling of proximity within itself. There’s no suburbs to escape to from the noise. You can only ever get a few streets away.
There’s a small community on the other side of the river that we couldn’t see because the ferry wasn’t running yet. I’m not sure if there was an ice road to drive over in the winter, but I heard people talking about when the ferry would be running again so they could see people on the other side again.
Aside from being an interesting place all on its own, Dawson City is also the jumping off point for the Dempster Highway, about 20 minutes out of town, the start of a highway that takes you to Inuvik, Northwest Territories, and worthy of its own post.
Probably the most famous thing to do in Dawson is the sourtoe cocktail, which is taking a shot of whiskey with a human toe in it. There were only certain times you could do this and it didn’t line up with when we’d be in town, but we went to the bar early one afternoon before heading out of town and were lucky enough to find that the only guy who could do the ceremony was there having breakfast and agreed to do it for us.
Its remoteness is part of what makes Dawson as close to a time capsule of a town that I’ve seen, and of course the town’s dedication to it, passing laws that don’t allow chains to operate there and for the downtown to look the way it does. Its uniqueness is what makes me still think about it, wondering what’s happening there now, and if the people I met living there are still enjoying it, if they were running from something, and if so, if they found it in that small community, so alive through a facade of its past.
describing space 