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Mawlers’ Big Adventure ’04:
Dawson City - The Pictures

Pictures from the day spent bumming around Dawson City, itself, including the gold mine trip, Dredge No.4, etc.

These pictures were actually taken the first time we were in Dawson City, a week ago, but they fit better on this page, so here they are. Sticklers for consistency should take their own vacations.
A general shot of Dawson City. All the streets are still dirt.	Some of the buildings have "character".	They must have moved this one from San Francisco. It would be perfect on one of the hills.

If you look closely, you can see a person in the upper-floor window on the right. Thankfully, this hotel is not actually operating.	This is the old CIBC bank building that is rotting down on the waterfront.	Judging by pictures we saw around town, it has been rotting in this condition for decades, now.

The Palace Grand Theatre still has shows.	Gotta love the color of this place.	The post office is a beautiful building, inside and out, but we did not have a chance to go in.

Here is a series of sunset pictures looking from the Dawson levee, across the Yukon River.	In this piture, you can see a couple of sizable boats making their way across. In fact, the ferry is just left of center.	More sunset.

What can we say? It really was beautiful.	Yup, still pretty.	Apparently, the swallows also return to Dawson City, but it must not be as poetic as San Juan Capistrano.
These pictures were taken on the day we spent touring around Dawson City and surrounding areas.
This is the interpretive diagram that goes with Gold Dredge No.4.	The insides of the dredge are fascinating with supports going in all directions.	The machinery was really interesting. This is a pump for bringing water through the sorting process.
These gears work the digging arm that sticks out in front.	These are the same gears, but here you can see the spool of steel cable that they operate.	These gears probably help turn the sorting cylinder.
This is the rear "mast". It holds the giant pins on which the dredge would pivot. It also controls the height of the waste rock discard chute.	The dredge caused so much vibration that light bulbs kept burning out very quickly, so they created these shock-absorbing light fixtures.	This is just a nice picture out the rear windows of the dredge toward the rear "mast".
These gears are probably the tops of the gears from a couple of rows back.	A side-view of the gears in the previous picture.	Up in the control room, there is a big bank of levers for controlling all sorts of things, not that I have any idea what each does.
Around in the back of the drege, you can look right into the main sorting cylinder. The holes are small enough that only gold and small gravel can get through.	The waste rock (slag) from the sorting cylinder just rolls down and gets onto a conveyor belt running out through this arm stickiing out to the rear, where it is dumped in the piles you see everywhere around Dawson.	Over on the other side of the dredge, Parks Canada is collecting dredge parts, including these cylinder rings.
The complexity of the connections from the gears through the push rods is fascinating.	Those are the largest drum-brakes I have ever seen.	Back outside, Lea Ann saw this great shot through one of the old digging buckets.
As we drove away, Lea Ann took a nice long-shot of the dredge, which almost gives some sense of its size.	At our next stop, Goldbottom Mine Tours, we saw the modern equivalent of the dredge. You can see the modern equipment they now use to load the gravel.	And to the left, the slag piles that come out the rear.
Unearthed fossils are a by-product of stripping off the top-soil and permafrost.	This is a mastadon skull (with Lea Ann's shadow).	On the way back to Dawson, we decided to stop and get a picture of the goofy welcome sign.
The other side of the welcome sign.	Over looking Dawson is the Midnight Dome, which provides quite a view on a day where there is a bit less smoke in the air.	Here is a close-up of the town.

The previous installment: Tourists in Dawson City	The next installment: Dawson City to Border City

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All materials © 2004 Lea Ann Mawler & Stuart Mawler