Dawson City · The Gold Seekers Left

Gold was found in the Klondike in 1896 and tens of thousands of people poured into Dawson City in the Yukon; saloons, gambling houses and dance halls went up overnight. Ten years later the gold was worked out and the people left like a falling tide. The town stayed.

The old wooden houses are still there, leaning where the permafrost has thawed and settled. The miners’ graveyard remains too, its headstones facing different ways, because the dead came from different churches.

In winter there are now only a little over a thousand people here. The nights are cold and quiet, and the whole street the lamps light is empty.

Haunted Ruins / Yukon · Canada / 1896