Dawson City: Gold Flows and Sourtoes

(2023 Alaska Revisited Ep 23)

A visit to the Yukon wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Dawson City, location of the historic Klondike Gold Rush.  Before leaving Alaska, we stopped at quirky Chicken, and then continued to Dawson City via the Top of the World Highway.

Chicken, Alaska

Chicken is a surviving Alaska gold rush town with a year-round population of 17.  There’s a historic gold dredge, gas station, campground, a couple gift shops, café and saloon, and, of course, a large chicken statue. 

In 1902, town founders planned to name the community Ptarmigan. However, due to disagreement on the spelling, they named it Chicken instead.

After walking around the town and checking out the gift shops (which didn’t take long), we stopped in the café for, you guessed it, a cinnamon bun and coffee.  See our cinnamon bun review below to find out the results.

Crossing into Canada at the Top of the World

We continued on the Top of the World Highway, a 106-mile winding, gravel road between Chicken and Dawson City.   Trees became more and more scarce as the road climbed to over 4500 feet, and by the time we crossed the border into Canada at mile 40, there were amazing treeless views in all directions.  We were reminded of similar views along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

Dawson City

We camped along the Yukon River across from Dawson City.   A 10-minute ferry ride brought us across the swift flowing river into the town.  Most of the town consists of gold-rush era buildings and aside from the paved main street, all other streets are dusty/muddy dirt with wooden sidewalks throughout.

After looking through several shops and eating lunch at Sourdough Joe’s, we visited the small Jack London Heritage Museum. 

Several of London’s best known short stories (To Know Fire) and novels (Call of the Wild, White Fang) are based on his experiences during the Klondike gold rush in 1897, when he spent a year in the Yukon.  The museum includes a replica of a cabin he lived in while in the Yukon, built with half of the logs from his original cabin.  The other half are in a museum in Oakland, CA, London’s hometown.      

^{Recreated Jack London cabin}

Can-cans and sourtoes:  not our thing!

We decided to pass on a couple of well known Dawson City attractions:  Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall, a small casino with bawdy can-can shows each evening, and the sourtoe cocktail at the Downtown Hotel.  The toe-tally bizarre cocktail features a shot of Yukon Jack whiskey garnished with a dehydrated human toe.   Yuck!

Klondike Gold Fever       

^{Outside and inside views of Gold Dredge #4}

Later that day we drove several miles out of town through an active gold mining area to Historic Gold Dredge #4, a Canada National Parks National Historic Site.   The dredge and others like it scooped up and filtered tons of dirt and rocks to extract millions of dollars of gold.  An unfortunate result of such mining are the rocky tailing mounds throughout the area.

There’s a public-accessible gold mining claim not far from the dredge where Pat and I panned for gold, seeking our fortunes or at least enough to pay for our next cinnamon bun.  Using pans borrowed from the Dawson City visitor center, we crouched by an icy creek where we added water to a small scoop of dirt in each of our pans.  We pulled out larger rocks and swirled away sand and finer grit, hoping to find yellow flakes glistening at the bottom of our pans.  The result?  A few specs of something, perhaps gold or (more likely) pyrite, otherwise known as fool’s gold.

Midnight Dome

The next day we visited Midnight Dome, a lookout atop a 2911-foot mountain above the town.  People gather on the dome on the summer solstice (June 21) to watch the sun drop below the horizon and rise a few minutes later.   The sun didn’t set during our daytime visit, but we did see the town far below, as well as where the winding Klondike River flows into the Yukon.  The Ogilvie Mountains, where we drove the Top of the World Highway several days before, was visible in the distance.

Paddlewheel Graveyard

^{Riverboat relics in the Paddlewheel Graveyard}

On our final evening we walked a half-mile along the banks of the Yukon River to explore the paddlewheel graveyard.  There we saw the collapsed and decaying hulls and paddlewheels of several boats, once the primary method of transportation on the Yukon and other rivers in the area.  As air transport became more common and the road connecting Dawson City to Whitehorse was completed in 1953, the need for such boats diminished and several were drydocked along the river.                    

Critter Count

One severed toe (which we didn’t actually see and will spare you a picture of)
All of the other critters were hiding this week

Cinnamon Bun Review

Who would think a tiny café in a remote Alaska town would have amazing cinnamon buns! 

We stepped into the small Chicken Creek Café and there they were, cinnamon buns fresh from the oven and lined up on the counter, ready for us to consume and review!

^{Fresh baked cinnamon buns (and more) in the Chicken Creek Cafe}

Each pillowy bun was the size of two fists, golden brown, and covered with a thick layer of icing.  We cut our bun into smaller pieces, and washed down the cinnamony, sweet morsels with fresh brewed coffee.  The cream cheese icing was unusually good.   

Our tummies were bloated when we finished. It was the best bun thus far in our trip. 

Bun score – 5 out of 5  

Next Week:

1000 miles of dirt road and the Arctic Ocean.