Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

June 25-28, 2018

Alaska Highway, Milepost 918

This travel day was a pretty one as these three photos show.

The city of Whitehorse is on the upper reaches of the Yukon River and is the capital of the Yukon Territory.   The territory has an area larger than that of California with a population of 38,000.  Two-thirds of that population lives in Whitehorse.  The northern terminus of the White Pass and Yukon River Railway connected the Yukon River with Skagway in 1900 and spurred growth in the area. Steamboats were available to carry passengers on to Dawson City, about 350 miles north, and on to the Bering Sea, some 1,500 miles north.  No highway, however, served the city until the completion of the Alaska Highway in 1942.  The city was named because nearby foaming rapids resembled white horses’ manes.

Whitehorse’s economic base includes mining, tourism, retail, and government.

We understand why tourism is popular.  We had fun just being in the city.

Yukon Legislative Building

The Yukon Territorial Government moved to Whitehorse in 1953.  We visited the building that houses the legislature and asked about seeing it.  Floyd McCormick, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, was kind enough to give us a guided tour.  We noticed that although the building’s architecture is contemporary, it contains traditional elements like the Mace, arches, and art.

S. S. Klondike

The Klondike was built in 1929 by the British Yukon Navigation Company.  It was the largest sternwheeler in the Yukon with a cargo capacity fifty percent greater than previous boats.  It could carry 300 tons.  It carried mail, general supplies, passengers, and silver-lead ore along a 460-mile route to Dawson City until 1955.

Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center

When we researched things to do in Whitehorse we were surprised to learn that northern and central Yukon, eastern Siberia, and Alaska were ice-free during the Ice Age.  Sea level was lower because so much water was being held in glaciers and Siberia and Yukon were joined by the Bering Land Bridge for as much as 80% of the last million years.  This land bridge is known as Beringia (it takes its name from the Bering Strait) and blocked Pacific moisture, preventing the formation of ice in the lowlands of the area.  The Beringia Interpretive Center told us about all this and more.

No museum featuring natural history would be complete without a tribute to mammoths and/or mastodons.  Both animals lived in Beringia.  The grounds of the center featured several woolly mammoth statues.

And inside were woolly mammoth molars with vertical ridges appropriate for grazing on grasses

and mastodon molars with raised cusps appropriate for snapping and chewing on the branches of shrubs and trees.

The Yukon Transportation Museum is next door to the Beringia museum.  One exhibit is the world’s largest weather vane, a DC-3!

This plane was built in 1942 and flew transport missions in India and China during World War II.  It has also been a passenger plane and a bush plane.  It was retired in 1970 after it blew an engine on take-off and it became a weather vane in 1981.  The plane spins in winds of five knots or greater.

Miles Canyon

The Whitehorse Rapids flowed through Miles Canyon until the dam was built in 1959.  The canyon walls are were formed about 8.5 million years ago from a volcanic vent about three miles away.  The layer of basaltic lava is 360 feet deep, although only the top 32 feet are visible.  Before the dam was built the water level was about 30 feet lower than it is today.  The canyon was named for a U.S. Army officer by his lieutenant who was an explorer.

MacBride Museum

The MacBride Museum illustrates and preserves Yukon history.

Robert Service moved to Whitehorse in 1904 and worked as a teller.  In 1907 he published his first collection of poems which included “The Cremation of Sam McGee” in which a former Tennesseean who could never get warm is revived during his cremation and demands that the door be shut to keep out the cold.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee

McGee was a real person and the cabin in which he lived has been moved to Museum grounds.  He wasn’t from Tennessee, however, he didn’t die in the Yukon, and he wasn’t cremated in the firebox of a sternwheeler, but the poem is a wonderful story.

As long as we’re feeling poetic, we’ll close our section on the McBride Museum with an anonymous thought about the construction of the Alaskan Highway:

The Alaska Highway, winding in and winding out,

Fills my mind with serious doubt

As to whether the lout that built this route

Was going to Hell or coming out!

Whitehorse Rapids Fishway

The Fishway was built to help salmon move past a dam which was built in 1959.

The fishway has a rise of 60 feet and, at 1,182 feet long, is the longest wooden fish ladder n the world.

King or chinook salmon use this ladder to get to their spawning grounds.  In doing so, they travel three months and 1,875 miles up the Yukon River from the Bering Sea.  Only a small percentage successfully make the journey.  Most are victims of predation, starvation (they don’t eat on their journey) or fishing.

We learned about salmon development.  The life stages of king salmon are egg, eyed egg, alevin, and fry.

We also saw models or replicas of three methods for hunting salmon.

This pink piano on the boardwalk at the fish ladder is the first of a series to be placed in public places for people to play.  Jane couldn’t resist playing “River” by Bill Staines there.

Many people, school classes, and other groups have decorated salmon for display at the fish ladder.  Here’s a sample.

Gray Mountain

Gray Mountain (also known as Canyon Mountain) is made of limestone formed 220 million years ago as coral reefs in an ancient sea.  The road to the summit is paved as one passes light development and then is dirt.  Jane’s imagination was overactive as she and Dave crossed ruts and climbed steep sections, even though it’s a tame enough road that it’s used to access the communications equipment on the summit.

 

And on the way back to town: