Dawson City to Inuvik - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 189

Dawson City
We arrive, finally, on the banks of the legendary Yukon - a vast, swiftly moving river some
3185 km /1989 mi in length. With 250 paddle wheelers plying the waterways of the far north
between 1896 and the 1950s, 70 of them were on the Yukon River alone. A good example is
the SS Keno, docked in Dawson City near the Visitor Center.
Where the headwaters of the Yukon River originate is controversial but generally accepted
now to be the Llewellyn Glacier at the south end of Atlin Lake in British Columbia. From
the glacier it dips in and out of a number of other lakes, thus the controversy. But eventually
it makes its way into the Yukon Territory and from there to Alaska where it runs for more
than half of its length before emptying into the Bering Sea. Renowned for its role in the ro-
mance of the gold rush, the Yukon River is also one of the great salmon-breeding rivers of
the world.
There is a campground on the north side of the river that is reported to have a hiking path
which leads to the “graveyard of the riverboats.” That would be interesting but we would
like to get right into Dawson City itself so we take the George Black Ferry across. This free
ferry really struggles to make the crossing against the current. The slow passage gives us a
great view of the Dawson waterfront and I get to thinking about what the sight of it might
have meant to the thousands of miners who came out of the hills to blow their gold dust into
the Paris of the North.