Charlie Shugart Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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deinfaces wrote:
Surely that building wasn't there then. I thought that Dawson City was a bunch of tents.
The building is the Palace Grand Theater- built in 1899 (sorry- not 1898 ).
It's my understanding that this is the original- with some refurbishment in the intervening years because it is one of Dawson's most famous and important historic buildings.
Bob- At the time of Skookum Jim's 1896 gold discovery on Rabbit Creek (registered as Bonanza Creek because it sounded better), there was no town of Dawson City.
But as the Klondike Gold Rush began- a tent city also began. By 1900 Dawson had a population of more than 30,000 people and was the biggest city north of San Francisco and west of Winnipeg.
It was called the Paris of the North, and had some of the best entertainers in the world performing there. It also had many fine buildings, plus cabins and tents (and a school, a hospital, and a couple of bars ).
Further note about the actual discovery:
Skookum Jim's brother-in-law and best friend- George Carmack- was registered as the discoverer because he was a white man and Jim was an Indian- and they rightfully guessed that they would avoid problems by having Carmack take credit. This was never a problem between the two- or with their other Indian friend Tagish Charley.
Unfortunately, the popular notion is that Carmack made the actual discovery. But it was Jim.
The Klondike Gold Rush Stampede lasted from 1897 through 1898. It ended when all the gold streams were claimed.
But the town continued to boom because some miners were dragging huge amounts of placer gold from the rich streams.
When the first prospectors had taken out all the gold they could (using rockers and small sluice boxes), they sold their claims to corporations that built huge dredges. They dug up all the potential ore-bearing creek beds for a number of years.
Dawson thrived during that period.
But when the end of the gold came, people left the city by the thousands. The sucking sound could be heard all the way down in San Francisco .
Dawson City became something of a ghost town- but a few hundred remaining people kept it alive until tourism discovered it at the mid-point of the 20th century.
The city still has a small winter population- but it blossoms in summer with the tourist trade.
Charlie
Note: some research of the Klondike Gold Rush will help you realize that it was probably the biggest, longest-lasting, and most exciting gold rush- for the most people- in the entire world's history of gold rushes.
One example: to get across the Chilkoot Trail in the winter of 1897/98- 30,000+ men each packed 50 pounds of supplies on their backs and hiked over the pass. They dropped the supplies and went back for more. To get all their 2,000 pounds of (required by the Canadian Mounted Police) food and other supplies over the Chilkoot- they each had to hike 3,000 miles. In the dead of a northern winter.
And THEN- by the edge of frozen Bennett Lake- they built simple boats and rafts to float 500 miles down the Yukon River when the ice broke up.
Just to GET to the Klondike.
What an adventure! My oh my, yes.
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