Menu

Yukon Nuggets

Results 70
+1

1840

Pelly River

There are many features of the Yukon's impressive landscape which are named for an early day governor of the Hudson Bay company.

John Henry Pelly was born in England in 1777. As governor of the Hudson Bay Company in the…

Read more

00:0000:00

1867

Alaska purchase

Psst. Wanna buy a used bridge in Brooklyn? How about some ocean front property in Arizona? Con artists and their marks are a dime a dozen. Always were.

Take for example back in 1859. That year, Czarist Russia offered to…

Read more

00:0000:00

+1

1867

Lake Laberge

And there on the marge of Lake Laberge, I cremated Sam MacGee. That lake, made famous around the world by Robert Service was named for a Quebecer.

Like many other place names in the Yukon, Lake Laberge had at…

Read more

00:0000:00

1869

Kusawa Lake - Arkell Lake

As with many place names in the Yukon, Lake Kusawa had more than one name over time. Located just 40 air miles west of Whitehorse, this beautiful high mountain lake is a delight to travel, unless big winds blow in…

Read more

00:0000:00

1875

George Holt

The mountain passes into the interior of the Yukon were both feared and fearsome. So it is little wonder that it took an event of the magnitude of the Klondike Gold Rush to entice more than a brave few to…

Read more

00:0000:00

+1

1883

Frederick Schwatka

The famous Whitehorse rapids, the toughest stretch of water on the Yukon river, lies beneath a large man-made lake. Schwatka Lake bears the name of an American army Lieutenant who named many of the geographical features along the entire length…

Read more

00:0000:00

1883

Haeckel Hill

You have to hand it to Frederick Schwatka. There was hardly a geographic feature in the Yukon that he did not notice and name. In the summer of 1883, he led the Alaska exploring expedition down the entire length…

Read more

+1

1883

Marsh Lake

Webster's dictionary says that Marsh means "low-lying wet land with grassy vegetation" - a transition zone between land and water. So is that why Marsh Lake is called ... Marsh Lake?

Nope. Like many geographic features in the present day…

Read more

00:0000:00

1883

Richthofen Island

Like almost every land mark along the Yukon River, a large island in the middle of Lake Laberge was named by an American Lieutenant.

Frederick Schwatka had embarked along with six other American explorers from Dyea,…

Read more

00:0000:00

+1

1884

Stewart River

Many places in the Yukon are named for people who worked for the Hudson Bay Company. And most of it is due to the explorations of Robert Campbell, who named one of the most important rivers in the Yukon after…

Read more

00:0000:00

1887

Bove Island

If American explorer, Frederick Schwatka had his way, the famous Yukon Lake called Tagish would be named Bove Lake. Imagine that. One of the Yukon’s most beautiful and important lakes named for an Italian naval Lieutenant!

How did it…

Read more

+1

1887

Rink Rapids

When it comes to place names in the Yukon, we can thank George Dawson for keeping some early day names that mean so much to Yukoners today.

On his government-sponsored journey down the Yukon River in 1887,

Read more

00:0000:00

1890

Mt Logan

It's the jewel in the crown of the fabled St Elias mountains of the Yukon and Alaska. Towering slightly more than 19 thousand five hundred feet above sea level, the mountain is the second highest in North America.

Mt. Logan…

Read more

00:0000:00

1895

Klondike River

It was a fine salmon river, that’s why the local native people hammered stakes into the riverbed to make fish traps. Because of this practice, they called the river Trondek, a word roughly meaning hammer-water. The first written reports about…

Read more

00:0000:00

+1

1896

Eldorado Creek

A tiny creek which flows into Bonanza, was shunned by the gold seekers of 1896. Only those who were too late to stake a claim on Bonanza creek bothered with this little pup. It turned out to be the richest…

Read more

00:0000:00

+2

1897

Bench Claims

In the pell-mell rush to stake and claim any creek bed in the valley's below the rolling hills of the Klondike, few realized that most of the wealth lay not in the slabs of gold, like cheese in a sandwich…

Read more

00:0000:00

1898

Routes to the Klondike

There were many trails to the Klondike. The most popular was the Chilkoot Pass from the Alaskan villages of Skagway and Dyea. But there were many other routes. None was a very good option.

How to get to the…

Read more

00:0000:00

+2

1898

The Great Chilkoot Avalanche

It wasn't the first time that an avalanche had claimed lives on the trails to the Klondike. But on April 3rd, 1898, a natural disaster of monstrous proportions claimed the lives of more stampeders than any disease or crime.

For…

Read more

00:0000:00

1899

The Klondike reindeer saga

Many schemes came to not much during the Klondike gold rush. Bunco artists, whose only goal was to fleece the hard-working miner, dreamed up many of them. One wacky scheme was the product of the United States government. It failed,…

Read more

00:0000:00

+2

1900

Lewis Lake

There's a nice little lake just off the Klondike Highway between Whitehorse and Carcross. Well, it's a little lake today, but back in 1900 before a Vancouver based engineer came along, this lake was much, much larger.

When the White…

Read more

00:0000:00

1900

Mountie Mountains

In this the 125th anniversary of the formation of the North West Mounted Police, we'll take a look at mountains named for mounties who served in the Yukon as members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.

Mount Wood in the…

Read more

00:0000:00