Gold Rush Cabin

No one knows exactly when Dawson City's Gold Rush Cabin was built, but historical records place it here by 1900 and suggest it may be somewhat older. Its earliest documented connections are to the Trading & Exploring Company, one of the businesses operating in Dawson as the frenzy of the Klondike Gold Rush was beginning to subside.

Somehow, the little log cabin survived what happened next. As Dawson's population collapsed from the tens of thousands who had rushed north in search of gold, buildings were abandoned, dismantled, moved or disappeared altogether. This one remained and continued to serve as a home through much quieter decades of Dawson's history. 

By the early 2000s, however, survival was becoming considerably less certain. The logs had deteriorated and the building leaned so dramatically that a guy wire was helping to hold it upright. In 2005, the cabin was dismantled. Each log was removed and numbered so it could eventually be returned to its original position. Rotten sections were removed and replacement pieces joined to surviving logs using traditional splicing techniques.

Taking the cabin apart uncovered traces of its earlier occupants. Beneath the tin roofing were remnants of an older sod roof. Some logs showed evidence of a chimney fire. Newspapers and pieces of denim had been tucked beneath the floorboards to keep out the cold, including pages from a poem called Despondency. A section of hand-painted wallpaper above a doorway was also preserved.

Once the repairs were complete, the numbered logs were put back into place and the cabin began another chapter. More than a century after it first appeared in Dawson's records, it still stands overlooking the Yukon River—and, unusually for a surviving Gold Rush-era building, visitors can actually spend the night inside it.