Dawson City

We leave the University of Fairbanks early..

The route takes me back down to the Alcan highway picking up the Taylors Highway which is also known as "The Top of the World Highway"

this is a sort of loop road which takes in the towns of "Chicken" and Dawson City.... total mileage of around 430 miles...

Tarmac at first than mostly dirt and gravel for the remainder!

The Taylor highway is also home to the next border crossing back into Canada of which is perched on the top of the highway and it has some great views..

The first stop of the day is Chicken.. strange name I know but its was called Chicken purely down the the fact that the inhabitants of the town couldn't spell the original towns name of "Ptarmigan" the grouse type game bird that originally inhabited the area!!!

It really is only an outpost where the local gold miners use as their base for getting together.. no larger than a lorry park! With a total of 3 full time inhabitants... they also know how to capitalise on the passing travellers and holiday makers running through there on the way to Dawson City..

They sell chicken feet back scratchers as well, rubber chickens..! fluffy chickens..! and gold nuggets!!!

Knives.. they like their knives..bear traps..and the customer service is spot on as well..

Server "yeah"
Me: "Raspberry ice cream please"
Server: "$3.99"
Me: "Thank you"
server "yeah"..To next person:
"I'd like to buy a chicken please"
Server "Rubber or Fluffy?"......

Its easy when you know how eh?
These boys love a tourist...

The immediate surrounding area is littered with all sorts of scrap machinery that the average joe who passes through thinks its something to do with their gold mining heritage, but its not..its just left at the last place the last person used it! or where it seemed to break down.. but I think that really they all seem to be a bunch of lazy bar stools sitting and spitting, talking bollox! (thats my impression of it!) 

I maybe wrong though!!

After visiting Chicken we have a mad couple of hours dirt riding in to the hills that mark the entrance to Dawson city..

We follow the road down to the edge of the Yukon river where the towns ferry takes us across to the main centre of the town!

The current of the Yukon is tremendous and It shows its benign strength as the ferry crabs its way across the waters and finally docks with a thump!

What this river must be like Late May with the melt waters during the thaw! that must be a sight!

The city of Dawson was built on the back of the gold mining Industry where gold was first discovered at Bonanza creek during the late 1890’s..

Many parts of the town are in as original state and again like Chicken the place now thrives on tourism..

Gold mining is evident all over this town and during our ride to Dawson there were many individual prospectors and mining enterprises working away trying to make their fortune from the many creeks that are in the area.

 Staying at the famous Downtown Hotel in central Dawson and we settle in for a couple of nights stay..

We have dinner at Diamond Tooth Gerties casino which to all intense and purposes was the must do visit…

We have probably the worst dinner of the trip and watch the cabaret and decide enough is enough.

We have a few beers watch the midnight sun come and go and head off to bed as tomorrow we go sight seeing and picture collecting!

Last night we had a board meeting… its difficult as you’d imagine to get all of us to agree to do everything together without someone getting upset with the run of play.. but there seems a slight collective interest to go and visit Dredge number 4 a few miles up the road.

So after breakfast thats what we do… But as we get down the road I realise I have another tyre failure and while I stop to get it sorted while the others bar Gary ride off  leaving for the attraction..

Seems funny that now I’ve had both front and rear tyre flat during the trip!! No puncture just gone flat..so I turn around and find the nearest Gas station.

I catch up with the lads who in their nicest concerned way ask me where the ******* I’ve been ,and I’m a lucky ****as the dredge tour is about to start in five minutes..

Now for those of you who can’t be bothered to Google dredge number 4 its probably one the most incredible piece of gold mining equipment man has ever used!!! And for that matter the most destructive …

Four stories tall 200 feet long It decimated the local area, During the Gold Rush of the late 1890’s The gold mining industrialists developed grander and more profitable ways of extracting the gold seams from beneath the ground and perma-frosted soil.

If you look closely you can make out the Dredge in the upper centre of the picture

Dredge number 4 was one of eleven built and resembled a ship!

While floated on man made ponds of around 10-12 feet deep the dredge was moved around 10 feet per

day! half a mile per year!!

 The Dredges Bridge

As a result the whole area literally 10’s of square miles was dug up between them methodically processing that areas earth..its “tailings”expelled out the back of these great machines!!!

These tailings are still there today even though the last of the dredges stopped working in the 1950’s

Every 3-4 days 50-60lbs of gold was recovered from each dredge!!!

 Clutches and Brakes (blokely Stuff I know!)

 

 One bucket scoop was equal to three mens work load per hour The dredge had 42 buckets digging one bucket every 18 seconds! 24 hours a day!

And while we were being guided around on the tour 

A mother and her kids showed up!

Mooosee!

After the tour finished I had a little bimble around Dawson

The Ferry fighting the currents!
The SS Keno paddle steamer,  the sister ship of the SS Klondike at Whitehorse
these were the boats used to ferry the gold rush miners to Dawson

Hectic

This was where the film Paint your Wagon was based on!

So thats Dawson City crossed off the trip, and now the next few days are hard long slogs south cutting throughout Dawson Creek Banff and Jasper

Cheery O