Yukon Territory Guide

Although much of Canada still has the flavour of the last frontier, it's only when you embark on the mainland push north to the Yukon that you know for certain you're leaving the mainstream of North American life behind. In the popular imagination, the north figures as a perpetually frozen wasteland blasted by ferocious gloomy winters, inhabited - if at all - by hardened characters beyond the reach of civilization. In truth, it's a region where months of summer sunshine offer almost limitless opportunities for outdoor activities and an incredible profusion of flora and fauna; a country within a country, the character of whose settlements has often been forged by the mingling of white settlers and aboriginal peoples.

Whitehorse is the likeable capital of the Yukon, home to two-thirds of its population (around 24,000 people), the centre of its mining and forestry industries, and a bustling, welcoming stopoff for thousands of summer visitors. Whilst roads bring in today's business, the town owes its existence to the Yukon River, a 3000-kilometre artery that rises in BC's Coast Mountains and flows through the heart of the Yukon and Alaska to the Bering Sea. The river's flood plain and strange escarpment above the present town were long a resting point for Dene peoples, but the spot burgeoned into a full-blown city with the arrival of thousands of stampeders in the spring of 1898. Having braved the Chilkoot Pass to meet the Yukon's upper reaches, men and supplies then had to pause on the shores of Lineman or Bennett Lake before navigating the Mile's Canyon and White Horse rapids southeast of the present town. After the first few boats through had been reduced to matchwood, the Mounties laid down rules allowing only experienced boatmen to take craft through - writer Jack London, one such boatman, made $3000 in the summer of 1898, when more than seven thousand boats left the lakes. After a period the prospectors constructed an eight-kilometre wooden tramway around the rapids, and in time raised a shantytown settlement at the canyon and tramway's northern head to catch their breath before the river journey to Dawson City.

The completion of the White Pass and Yukon Railway (WP&YR) to Whitehorse (newly named after the rapids) put this tentative settlement on a firmer footing - almost at the same time as the gold rush petered out. In the early years of the twentieth century the town's population dwindled quickly from about 10,000 to about 400; for forty years the place slumbered, barely sustained by copper mining and the paddle-wheelers that plied the river carrying freight and the occasional tourist. The town's second boom arrived with the construction of the Alaska Highway, a kick-start that swelled the town's population from 800 to 40,000 almost overnight, and has stood it in good stead ever since.

Few episodes in Canadian history have captured the imagination like the Klondike gold rush, and few places have remained as evocative of their past as Dawson City, the stampede's tumultuous capital. For a few months in 1898 this former patch of moose pasture became one of the wealthiest and most famous places on earth, as something like 100,000 people struggled across huge tracts of wilderness to seek their fortunes in the richest gold field of all time. Most people approach the town on the Klondike Hwy from Whitehorse, a wonderful road running through almost utter wilderness, and knowing the background to the place it's hard not to near the road's end without high expectations. Little at first, however, distinguishes its surroundings. Some 500km from Whitehorse the road wanders through low but steeply sided hills covered in spruce, aspen and dwarf firs, and then picks up a small ice-clear river - the Klondike. Gradually the first small spoil heaps appear on the hills to the south, and then suddenly the entire valley bottom turns into a devastated landscape of vast boulders and abandoned workings. The desolate tailings continue for several kilometres until the Klondike flows into the much broader Yukon and the town, previously hidden by hills, comes suddenly into view.

An ever-increasing number of tourists and backpackers come up here, many drawn by the boardwalks, rutted dirt streets and dozens of false-fronted wooden houses, others to canoe the Yukon or travel down the Dempster or Top of the World highways into Alaska and the Northwest Territories. After decades of decline Parks Canada is restoring the town, now deservedly a National Historic Site, a process that is bringing about increased commercialism, increased population (2000 and rising), new hotels and a sense that some of the town's character may be about to be lost. That said, in a spot where permafrost buckles buildings, it snows in August, and temperatures touch -60°C during winters of almost perpetual gloom, there's little real chance of Dawson losing the gritty, weather-battered feel of a true frontier town. More to the point, small-time prospecting still goes on, and there are one or two rough-and-ready bars whose hardened locals take a dim view of sharing their beers, let alone their gold, with coachloads of tourists.

You could easily spend a couple of days here: one exploring the town, the other touring the old Klondike creeks to the east. If at all possible prime yourself beforehand with the background to one of the most colourful chapters in Canada's history: Pierre Berton's widely available bestseller, Klondike - The Last Great Gold Rush 1896-1899, is a superbly written introduction both to the period and to the place.