Travels With Miranda

Parks Canada’s Bear Creek Compound is somewhat legendary in Dawson as few have stepped foot in it. Today, for the first time in at least seven years, and possibly for the last time, the compound was opened to the public for a few hours. Checking it out seemed like a good use of my afternoon break!

From the Parks Canada website:

Bear Creek is an industrial complex of some 65 buildings and related structures located in the Klondike River Valley, 10 kilometres east of Dawson City. From 1905 to 1966, Bear Creek was the Klondike headquarters for corporate mining interests, acting as the administrative and repair centre for the goldfield’s dredging operations. These huge dredges worked the goldfields, replacing the small individual miner of the gold rush and ensuring the viability of gold mining as a profitable business up until 1966.

(For a refresher course on dredges, go back to my post about Dredge No. 4.)

Parks Canada acquired the complex in 1975 but because of environmental concerns could not do too much with it. One of the biggest hazards is the mercury that was used in the gold extraction process. The cost of rehabilitating the site to make it safe for the public would be prohibitive. Today, Parks Canada mostly uses the buildings for storage, but there is one garage left for repairing big machinery.

Visiting the compound was an extraordinary experience. The majority of the buildings are in some stage of decay, mostly advanced, and many have artifacts left in situ, as though time has stood still. It reminded me a lot of touring Alcatraz, actually, and the weight of history was incredibly present.

I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to tour the Bear Creek compound. What a way to conclude my stay in the Klondike!

Curiosity got the best of me this afternoon and I decided to use my break to check out the Dawson City Museum. As side note, this was the first time I had to pay admission to a Dawson attraction. The fee is $9 for adults, but I was given the student rate of $7.50. Even at nine bucks, I wouldn’t have squawked!

The museum is housed in the old Territorial Administration Building and contains enough exhibits to occupy an hour or two. It is the ubiquitous museum found in capital cities that discusses the history of the area from prehistoric times to today.

My trip to the museum answered one of the most burning questions I have been pondering about placer mining: why were shafts dug in the winter when the ground had to be thawed. Surely, that was a lot of work! The answer is that by digging in the winter, the miners didn’t need to build supports for the shafts.

The Dawson City Museum is a respectable institution that offers good value for the admission charge. It sums up most of the other attractions and is probably the one thing you should see if you only have an afternoon in Dawson. But, oh, what a shame that would be.

I still have quite a few attractions left to see, but am glad that I have now nailed down all the big ones!

The Dawson parks and recreation folks have been busy making wonderful improvements to the 9th Ave and Lookout Trails. I borrowed Oz this afternoon and set off for the Lookout to see what was the same and what was different.

There are three changes to the Lookout Trail:

1) the trailhead is now clearly marked and easy to find;

2) the Ninth Ave trail follows the Lookout Trail for a spell and then branches off to the left; I’ll need to come back to see how far it goes;

3) the Lookout Trail is slowly being extended up towards the Slide. There was a bit of a trail last year, but now it is obviously being turned into a proper, maintained, trail.

Good job, parks and rec!

Oz was great; curious but not to the point of tugging at his leash and willing to match my pace. I love our dates!

The S.S. Keno is a paddleboat that hauled cargo up and down the Yukon from the early 1920′s to the mid 1950′s. When the road to Keno City was built in the 50′s, paddlewheelers fell out of favour. For one thing, they were using wood at such a rate that there was a risk of running out of trees! The completion of the Klondike highway to Dawson City was the nail in the paddlewheelers coffin.

On August 23, 1960, the S.S. Keno began her final journey from Whitehorse to Dawson City where she would be dry docked forever and turned into a museum. Today, she is a National Historic Site.

My favourite part of the exhibit was the movie! It was filmed in August 1960 and documents the S.S. Keno’s final voyage. It answered one of my most burning questions about the Klondike: how did ships pass through Five Finger Rapids? The movie is also good for comic relief when a man waxes poetically about how much easier life was then compared to the 1920′s since modern technology had brought about DDT and mosquitoes were no longer a problem…

Visiting the S.S. Keno takes about an hour and fills in yet another gap of Dawson’s history.

After the Robert Service program I headed back to Front Street for an ice cream, then went to visit the Commissioner’s Residence.

Territorial administration is a little different from that of the provinces and I’m not quite up to speed on it. If I understand correctly, the Commissioner of Yukon is the Queen’s representative in the territory, similar to the role of the Governor General.

At the time when Dawson was the capital of the Yukon territory, the commissioner resided in a grand house on Front Street. It was grander once upon a time, but burned down during a Christmas fire and was rebuilt much more simply.

Today, it’s possible to tour the house and grounds at your leisure. There isn’t much information provided, so it’s not the best value attraction in Dawson. I’d do it as part of the Pick-a-Pack and consider it the ‘free’ option.

Like many buildings in Dawson, the gorgeous bright yellow exterior of the house is a façade belying the fact that most of the interior is a wreck. The front bottom half of the house was restored to Edwardian splendour and reminds me of Rutherford House in Edmonton, decorated in the same era. The back bottom and top halves of the house are almost in ruins. This actually adds a level of interest to the visit. In the second incarnation of the home, it was used as a hospital run by nuns, so wandering through the house you can see all the layers of history associated with it. I loved that I could open just about any door and peak inside, but was disappointed that the third story is off limits. My favourite part of the house was the huge second story porch. I can just imagine sitting up there with binoculars and watching steamboats go up and down the Yukon River.

A notable resident of this home was the Honourable Martha Black, Canada’s second female Member of Parliament (MP) who took on the mantle after her husband died in office. Mrs. Black came over the Chilkoot Pass with her brother and is one of the most famous women associated with the golden age of the Klondike.

Thus ended by mostly free day and off to work I went. I still have several attractions to visit!