British Columbia Whitehorse to Haida Gwaii - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 217

Atlin
The tiny town of Atlin (pop 400) is a magnet for the arts festival crowd. Some 2,000 of
them this year. I have no idea how the Atlin Festival manages to be such a draw because it
is an awkward place to get to. The address is in BC but to get there you have to travel up
the Alaska Hwy through the Yukon to within 64 km /40 mi of Whitehorse. That takes you
to Jake's Corner, where you head south, back into BC for nearly 100 km /60 mi. When we
were there, most of that 100 km was gravel. Fortunately, it's a place well worth getting to.
The name comes from the Tlingit original, ÂTièn which means big lake and refers to the
adjoining water bodies: Atlin Lake, Little Atlin Lake and Tagish Lake. The road into Atlin
runs alongside the shorelines of these lakes and others, veering inland from time to time.
The booklet provided by the Visitors Center urged us to watch the rock faces on the east side
of the road for the hundreds of mountain goats and sheep that live there. We enjoyed taking
little side trips up leafy trails to look for them, but today they all seemed to be on the other
side of the mountain.
The biggest of the lakes, Atlin proper, extends over 145 km /90 mi in length. I did read that
the town of Atlin is “just over the lake” from Alaska. That is a stretch. Atlin is over the lake