Whitehorse, Yukon's Capital

We spent three days in Whitehorse visiting the cultural hotspots like Walmart, Canadian Tire, the library (wifi) and, and, and...  

What you may not know is that I am the second member of my family ever to visit Whitehorse.    Marsha and I are in a motorhome; my grandfather, John E. Badley, for whom I was named, came through in the winter of 1897-1898 mushing a dogsled team on his way to the gold rush in Dawson.

Because this is the capital of what is now called "Yukon" (instead of "Yukon Territory," or even "The Yukon") it hosts the Yukon Archives.  There we spend a couple of afternoons trying to find some trace of the incredible man I always called, "Pop."

Pop was about 19 years old when he landed in Skagway's neighboring town Dyea, and packed the Chilkoot Trail to the high Chilkoot pass. You've probably seen photos of that.  Amazing pictures show lines of ant-like men climbing steps carved in ice for six hours with heavy packs to get to the top of the pass.  By then Pop had already made the pilgrimage by wagon train from Kansas to the Oregon Territory; prospected in Arizona, Colorado and Montana, and had even driven a stagecoach between Silver City,  Deming and Lordsburg New Mexico,.  This, by the way, was the same route John Wayne took in his first John Ford western movie, Stagecoach. 

Pop was one of 60,000 people, mostly Americans, who came north for the big gold rush.  He was one of only 20,000 to make it all the way across the frozen countryside to Dawson.  By then, the good claims were pretty much all taken.

We knew Pop had gone to the Philippines in 1900 to fight a bunch of Muslim fanatics trying to wrestle control of the country from the US, which had won it in a recent war with the Spanish. So he must have arrived here in the fall of 1897 or winter of 1898.  Alas, we hit the archives when their regular staff was off somewhere, but some very nice researchers tried very hard to help us. We found zip.  But the good records really didn't start until 1899 when the Mounties put a scale atop the pass and demanded you place about 1100 lbs of supplies on it before they would let you enter Canada.  More on that when we get to Skagway in a month or so.

Whitehorse is a nice little town on the Yukon River.  It is civilized, meaning it has two Starbucks stores. And some nice eateries.













We found that MacDonalds charges $10 for a Big Mac meal, so paying $20 for some really good Halibut fish and chips at the Klondike Rib and Salmon Barbeque eatery didn't seem out of line. Stuff costs up here.  

Our waitress (can you still say that?) had a badge proclaiming her to be "Taylor." I asked her if that was a first or last name and she explained that when she was born she had some terrible problem. Her father saved her life by flying her to a hospital in his TaylorCraft airplane.  So she was named for the plane.  She was delighted to find I knew what a TaylorCraft was. How great to have a story like that to go with your name. 

We also visited the SS Klondike, a paddlewheel steamer built in 1937 to haul ore and ferry supplies up and down the Yukon River.  The Yukon River, by the way, has its origins about 13 miles from the ocean at Skagway, but it takes over 2000 miles for it to reach the Bering Sea near Nome.

This ship provides a good example of how the river drove all forms of business and life in the Yukon. The Klondike paddlewheeler would work all summer to move cargo, ore and people up and down the river.  It then got pulled up on the shore for the long winter while the river was frozen solid. It sank after having its hull holed at one point, but was rebuilt by putting its entire superstructure onto a new hull.

This gives you a look at Whitehorse today.  Some old buildings and new ones.  The river still runs through it. But the rapids that killed 300 would-be miners is now under a lake.
The train from Skagway came here in 1899, so late-coming miners heading for Dawson could avoid the dreaded Chilcoot and White  Passes and take a train directly to Whitehorse where they could board a steamer to Dawson. This is what made Whitehorse a city.  It became a  transportation hub.

I thought this view offered an interesting perspective of the old and the new in Whitehorse.

This is Whitehorse viewed from across the river just above the hospital.

 

Ok, so I notice odd stuff.  You can tell a vehicle owned by a resident from one owned by a visitor by the telltale cord hanging out the front of the grille (above right).  These cords allow you to plug your car in at night to keep the engine from freezing.  The Yukon license plates (right) are a clue as well. They feature a gold panner.  So, here is a Canadian license plate with a picture of an American panning gold in their country. Pretty amazing that they even let us in.

I don't normally stand in front of a landing airplane.  But at the airport  here they have this DC-3 on a pole.  It has over 30,000 flying hours, which is a lot.  It is a former airliner, and a military Dakota from WWII, and it now serves as a----get this---- weather vane.  Put this on your barn, I dare you!

This is where we started out. At Walmart with a whole bunch of other people.  Including a guy operating a taxi service from an RV parked next to us in the Walmart lot!  He ran his generator all night and cranked up one of his two taxies at all hours whenever he got called to make a run. We left the next morning.

We moved to this RV park south of town.  It was much nicer. Set in the trees with no close neighbors. We even built a fire one night. The only problem was their wifi kept quitting, so I'm send this from a Starbucks right back next to Walmart.



It is now Friday and we are moving on to who knows where. Dawson is more than 300 miles and 8 hours north, NOT on the Alaska Highway, so we may stop in Stewart Landing.  Or Carmack.  You probably won't hear from us again till we reach Dawson and find a library with WIFI.

In the immortal words of Johnny Horton, "North to Alaska, goin' north the rush is on."  If not Horton, I'm sure it was somebody.

John and Marsha