The Royal North-West Mounted Police building at Forty Mile.A view of Forty Mile historic site from the Yukon River.
Forty Mile is best known as the oldest town in Canada’s Yukon. It was established in 1886 at the confluence of the Yukon and Fortymile rivers by prospectors and fortune hunters in search of gold. Largely abandoned during the nearby Klondike Gold Rush, the town site continued to be used by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. It is currently a historic site that is co-owned and co-managed by Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in and the Government of Yukon.
The site has a much longer history, however, as a harvest area used by First Nations for generations. This location was one of the major fall river-crossing points of the Fortymile caribou herd. Hunters would intercept the herd here as it crossed the Yukon River. In spring and summer, it was the site of an important Arctic grayling and salmon fishery. Although this was not the location of the first encounter between local First Nations people and non-natives, it is the place where Hän-speaking people had their first extended interactions with European culture.
In 1886 Jack McQuesten, Alfred Mayo and Arthur Harper of the Alaska Commercial Company (ACCo) established a post here, after gold was discovered on the Fortymile River. Most of the miners who staked the original claims in the Klondike came from this area. Yukon's first mission school was established here in 1887 by the Anglican Church. That same year, North-West Mounted Police Inspector Charles Constantine established the territory's first police detachment. It is also likely that the Forty Mile farm was the site of the first agriculture in Yukon. By 1894, Forty Mile boasted two well-equipped stores (ACCo and the North American Transportation and Trading Company), a lending library, billiard room, 10 saloons, two restaurants, a theatre, an opera house, a watchmaker, and numerous distilleries. At its peak the town site's population was about 600. Today, only a handful of buildings remain.
The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Final Agreement, ratified by the First Nation's membership in 1998, specified that the Forty Mile, Fort Constantine and Fort Cudahy Historic Site was to be co-owned and co-managed by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and Yukon governments. Since 1998, archaeological investigations, archival and oral history research, and building stabilization and preservation have been carried out at the site. On June 11, 2006, the two governments signed a management plan at a ceremony and celebration hosted at Forty Mile by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and Yukon Historic Sites Unit.
Future plans for Forty Mile include improved visitor facilities, a major expansion of interpretive programming, and continued preservation work.
The nearest community is Dawson City, approximately 77km (48mi) upriver from the town site. Since the construction of a road to Clinton Creek from the Top of the World Highway in the late 1960s, the site has been accessible by road, and is about 97km (60mi) from Dawson. To this day most visitors to Forty Mile arrive by water, either traveling downriver from Dawson City or motoring up the Yukon River from Alaska.
Forty Mile was the place where the Discovery Claim was registered.
The Klondike is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City.
Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 44,238 as of March 2023. Whitehorse, the territorial capital, is the largest settlement in any of the three territories.
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896; when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. It has been immortalized in films, literature, and photographs.
The Hän language is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Hän Hwëch'in. Athabascan refers to the interrelated complexity of languages spoken in Canada and Alaska each with its own dialect: the village of Eagle, Alaska in the United States and the town of Dawson City, Yukon Territory in Canada, though there are also Hän speakers in the nearby city of Fairbanks, Alaska. Furthermore, there was a decline in speakers in Dawson City as a result of the influx of gold miners in the mid-19th century.
Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yukon.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a national historical park operated by the National Park Service that seeks to commemorate the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. Though the gold fields that were the ultimate goal of the stampeders lay in the Yukon Territory, the park comprises staging areas for the trek there and the routes leading in its direction. There are four units, including three in Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska and a fourth in the Pioneer Square National Historic District in Seattle, Washington.
The Taylor Highway is a highway in the U.S. state of Alaska that extends 160 miles (258 km) from Tetlin Junction, about 11 miles (17 km) east of Tok on the Alaska Highway, to Eagle.
The Klondike River is a tributary of the Yukon River in Canada that gave its name to the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike River rises in the Ogilvie Mountains and flows into the Yukon River at Dawson City.
Clinton Creek is a ghost town in Yukon. It was a small company-owned asbestos mining town in western Yukon near the confluence of the Yukon and Fortymile rivers. It operated by the Cassiar Asbestos Corporation, which also operated the asbestos mine in Cassiar, British Columbia, from 1967 to 1978, when it was closed and all the buildings were auctioned off.
The Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin is a First Nation band government located in the Canadian territory, Yukon. Its main population centre is Dawson City, Yukon.
The Hän, Han or Hwëch'in / Han Hwech’in are a First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the United States; they are part of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. Their traditional lands centered on a heavily forested area around the Upper Yukon River, Klondike River (Tr'on'Dëk), Bonanza Creek and Sixtymile River and straddling what is now the Alaska-Yukon Territory border. In later times, the Han population became centered in Dawson City, Yukon and Eagle, Alaska.
The history of Yukon covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians through the Beringia land bridge approximately 20,000 years ago. In the 18th century, Russian explorers began to trade with the First Nations people along the Alaskan coast, and later established trade networks extending into Yukon. By the 19th century, traders from the Hudson's Bay Company were also active in the region. The region was administered as a part of the North-Western Territory until 1870, when the United Kingdom transferred the territory to Canada and it became the North-West Territories.
Tr'ochëk is the site of a traditional Hän fishing camp at the confluence of the Klondike River and Yukon River. The site is owned and managed by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, and is operated by the First Nation's Department of Heritage.
The Yukon Field Force, later termed the Yukon Garrison, was a unit of 203 officers and men from the Permanent Force of the Canadian Militia that served in the Yukon between 1898 and 1900. The force was created in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush in response to fears that the United States might attempt to seize the region. It left Ottawa on May 6, 1898, travelling by rail and sea to the port of Glenora in British Columbia. From there, the unit made an arduous journey of 890 kilometres (550 mi) on foot and using makeshift boats to Fort Selkirk, where they established their headquarters. A detachment of 72 men was sent to the boom town of Dawson City to support the North-West Mounted Police, with duties that included guarding the gold deposits of the local banks. As the fears of an annexation reduced, pressures grew for the recall of the force. The force was halved in size in July 1898 and the remainder were finally withdrawn in June 1900.
The Yukon School of Visual Arts (SOVA) is Canada's most northerly post-secondary fine arts school, and it receives its accreditation through the Applied Arts Division of Yukon College. SOVA is located within the traditional territory of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. SOVA offers a Foundation Year Program, which is the equivalent of the first year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree. The school offers an experimental, integrated curriculum that is studio-based with liberal arts courses. Successful students continue their degrees at their choice of five partnering art schools across Canada, including the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax.
Tombstone Territorial Park is a territorial park in the Yukon, one of three territories in Canada. It is in central Yukon, near the southern end of the Dempster Highway, stretching from the 50.5 to the 115.0 kilometre marker. The park protects over 2100 square kilometres of rugged peaks, permafrost landforms and wildlife, including sections of the Blackstone Uplands and the Ogilvie Mountains. The Park is named for Tombstone Mountain's resemblance to a grave marker.
Thomas William O'Brien was a Klondike gold rush entrepreneur who was best known for his Klondike Mines Railway and Klondike brewery businesses. He was also elected as a member of the Yukon Territorial Council, and was the first president of the Yukon Order of Pioneers, Klondike Lodge.
The O'Brien Brewing and Malting Company, also known as the Klondike Brewery, was a brewery founded by Thomas O'Brien in Klondike City, an adjoining settlement to Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada from 1904 to 1919. It was established during a period in which Dawson City was expected to become an important regional city, and used modern techniques and equipment imported from California. It was initially successful, selling 68,748 gallons of beer in 1905, but Dawson's population declined and growing temperance attitudes threatened the business. O'Brien sold the company in 1915, and in 1919 prohibition forced its closure. The brewery was abandoned, and the remains of the site are now owned by the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation.
The history of the North-West Mounted Police in the Canadian north describes the activities of the North-West Mounted Police in the North-West Territories at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. The mounted police had been established to control the prairies along the Canadian-United States border in 1873, but were then also deployed to control the Yukon region during the Klondike Gold Rush, and subsequently expanded their operations into the Hudson Bay area and the far north. The force was amalgamated in 1920 to form part of the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who continued their predecessors' work across the region.
Portus B. Weare was a wooden sternwheel steamship built in 1892 for service on the Yukon River. She played a notable role in the Klondike gold rush, being the second ship to bring news of the Klondike gold strike and an estimated $1 million in gold down the river in 1897. This set off the gold rush. The vessel carried freight and passengers up the Yukon to Dawson City and later Fairbanks. She was abandoned in 1926 or 1927, after the need for steamboat transport to the interior declined.
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