Dawson City

History

The area of Dawson City was traditionally used for hunting and gathering by the Hän-speaking people of the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation and their forebears. The heart of their homeland was Tr'ochëk, a fishing camp at the confluence of the Klondike River and the Yukon River (now a National Historic Site of Canada), just across the Klondike River from modern Dawson City. This site was also an important summer gathering spot and a base for moose hunting on the Klondike Valley. The current settlement was founded by Joseph Ladue in January 1897. It was named after noted Canadian geologist George M. Dawson, who had explored and mapped the region in 1887. It served as Yukon's capital from the territory's founding in 1898 until 1952, when the seat was moved to Whitehorse. Dawson City was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush. The gold rush began in 1896 and changed the First Nations camp into a thriving city of 16,000–17,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted as all but 8,000 people left. When Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population had fallen to under 5,000. St. Paul's Anglican Church, built that same year, is a National Historic Site. The downtown was devastated by fire in 1897, 1899 and 1900 and by flooding in 1925, 1944, 1966, 1969 and 1979. Dawson City's population dropped again after World War II when the Alaska Highway bypassed it to the south. The economic damage to Dawson City was such that Whitehorse, the highway's hub, replaced it as territorial capital in 1953. Dawson City's population languished around the 600–900 mark through the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen and held stable since then. The high price of gold has made modern placer mining operations profitable, and the growth of tourism has…

Geography

Dawson City lies on the Tintina Fault. This fault has created the Tintina Trench and continues eastward for several hundred kilometres. Erosional remnants of lava flows form outcrops immediately north and west of Dawson City. Dawson City has a subarctic climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfc), with significantly higher continentality (greater temperature swings) than the territorial capital of Whitehorse. The average temperature in July is and in January is . and the average rainfall in July is and the average snowfall in January is . Dawson has an average total annual snowfall of and averages 77 frost free days per year.

Most-observed species

• Common Raven

  Corvus corax Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  321
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  210
• Dark-eyed Junco

  Junco hyemalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  202
• White-crowned Sparrow

  Zonotrichia leucophrys (J.R.Forster, 1772) · Aves
  176
• Violet-green Swallow

  Tachycineta thalassina (Swainson, 1827) · Aves
  135
• American herring gull, Smithsonian Gull

  Larus smithsonianus Coues, 1862 · Aves
  119
• Common Redpoll

  Acanthis flammea (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  117
• Boreal Chickadee

  Poecile hudsonicus (J.R.Forster, 1772) · Aves
  110

Most recent

• M 3.5 — 2026-06-29
  25 km E of Eagle Village, Alaska
• M 3.3 — 2025-12-30
  74 km NNE of Dawson City, Canada
• M 2.7 — 2025-08-14
  27 km ESE of Eagle Village, Alaska
• M 2.5 — 2024-11-28
  97 km ESE of Dawson City, Canada
• M 3.3 — 2024-03-04
  86 km NE of Dawson City, Canada
• M 3.7 — 2023-07-27
  89 km ENE of Dawson City, Canada