The George Black (a local politician) car ferry.
The wrecks of a couple of the paddle wheelers.
The fire department museum...
and the beautiful 1899 fire truck.
The Keno, the last of the paddle wheelers.
A main street looking towards the Moosehide landslide that happened before the gold rush.
More historic buildings built on mushy permafrost.
The stunning view from the Midnight Dome.
The environmental destruction is visible here on the mountain and the 'tailings' which are the piles of rock in the foreground.
Monday, August 21st.
I woke up this morning without any signs of athlete’s toe… After breakfast, I met up with Julie and a couple of others and we walked through town to the small car ferry that crosses the Yukon River. Some local people live over there and there is an 18-hole golf course that is off the grid and is apparently the most northly one. The ‘Top of the World’ highway which is popular with motorcyclists also arrives here from Alaska. We took the ferry to the other side to go for a nice walk along the river, through a campground and to the graveyard of two of the many paddle wheel steamers that were the link for Dawson and the outside world. The two ships are now just piles of decaying boards. When we got back, I spent the afternoon just wandering around town enjoying the nice warm temperatures and wearing shorts. I visited the firehall museum that housed a beautifully refurbished fire engine from 1899 that was originally pulled by two horses. I saw the last of the six large wooden warehouses where they stockpiled supplies and goods brought in by the boats for the long winter season. I also learned about the tragedy of the steam wheeler Princess Sophia that was traveling from Skagway on October 25, 1918, with many passengers from Dawson. It was overloaded and ran aground on a reef and then sank with a loss of everyone on board, a total of 278 passengers and 65 crew. I had dinner in the hotel restaurant and then took a shuttle bus to the top of the Midnight Dome (the top of a large hill) high above Dawson. It was a 20-minute ride up to a spectacular view of the rivers and valleys of the area and over Dawson. The locals come up here to party on the summer solstice when they receive almost 24 hours of daylight with the sun only dipping below the horizon for a couple of minutes. Weather and road conditions permitting they also come up here on the winter solstice to see the few minutes of sun over the mountains in a long dark winter. Then I used my pass to go and see the live entertainment at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s saloon and dancehall again. Then off to bed to watch the news about the wildfire and evacuation situation in Yellowknife… I have really enjoyed Dawson City but I am distracted...
Great photos as usual, Joe. I have just finished reading a very detailed entry on Wiki about the tragedy of the Princess Sophia. So sad since there were a number of rescue boats very close to the ship but bad weather and rocky conditions made transporting the passengers and crew to safety (arguably) impossible. An inquiry later, however, argued that a rescue might indeed have been successful. Your posts, Joe, often make me do some further research into something you have mentioned.
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