Carcross
| Carcross | |||
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 Carcross |
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| Location in Yukon | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Territory : | Yukon | ||
| Coordinates : | 60 ° 10 ′ N , 134 ° 42 ′ W | ||
| Residents : | 152 (as of 2001) | ||
 Hotel in the center of Carcross |
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Carcross is a village of 152 people on the Klondike Highway in the Yukon Territory of Canada .
It is about 100 km from Skagway in the Lake District north of the White Pass , the US-Canadian border.
The place owes its name to the herds of caribou who crossed the nearby strait on their hikes ("Carcross" is an abbreviation of Caribou Crossing ).
history
The narrowness between Lake Bennett and Tagish Lake , through which the herds of caribou passed twice a year, attracted Indian hunters at least 5,000 years ago . The region is the traditional area of the Carcross / Tagish First Nation .
The place was of great importance at the time of the gold rush from 1896, when goods arriving by land were reloaded here on stern wheel steamers and transported on the lake system towards the Yukon River . Thousands of boats were built here for this purpose, so Mike King built the largest sawmill in the territory. In late May 1898, the North West Mounted Police registered 778 boats under construction at Lake Lindeman , 850 in Bennett and vicinity, 198 at Caribou Crossing and Tagish Lake . 1200 new boats were expected for the next few weeks. Carcross was not the most important boat building site, but a royal post office (Royal Mail) and the Dominion Telegraph Line , a telegraph station, were built here. There were also hotels like The Caribou , built in 1898 , the oldest still flourishing hotel in the Yukon.
The White Pass Railway , which connected Whitehorse with Skagway via the White Pass , was completed on July 29, 1900 in a ceremony in Carcross, where the last nail was driven. Skookum Jim , one of the Indian explorers who started the gold rush, negotiated a contract with the White Pass Railway that would allow the railway company to lay tracks across his land if they gave work to the Carcross / Tagish , that is, the people around Indians. This contract is considered a society's first acknowledgment of land claims.
In July 1899 gold and silver were found on the Windy Arm of Tagish Lake, so that thousands of gold and silver seekers appeared around Carcross. By 1905 the American John Conrad managed to monopolize the regional deposits. Over 200 workers were drawn to the Town of Conrad , or simply Conrad , and shops, hotels, churches and a telephone line to Carcross were built in the town. The Gleaner , a steamboat, connected the two locations twice a week. Conrad had a material web built for 75,000 dollars that overcame 6 km and more than 1,200 meters in altitude. But the boom only lasted until 1914 when the silver price collapsed on the world market. Within a few months, the silver mine was closed and the place abandoned.
In 1899 gold was found at Atlin in British Columbia, and Carcross again served as a transit and supply station for the prospectors.
After the gold rush ended, the Anglican Bishop William Bompas moved his official residence from Forty Mile to Carcross in 1901 and built a school for the Indians. At his request, the government changed the place name from "Caribou Crossing" to "Carcross" in 1904 because of the likelihood of confusion in correspondence, which the bishop complained about.
In 1911 the government built what is known as a residential school for the children of the Indians, a boarding school like the ones that were being built across Canada for the indigenous people . In this Chooutla School the children were not allowed to use their mother tongue, were supposed to be assimilated and were separated from their parents for a long time. The curriculum included basic writing and arithmetic. This school system was not abandoned until the 1960s, and in June 2008 the Prime Minister apologized for the conditions prevailing throughout the country.
In 1942, when two soldiers broke into the Chooutla School dormitory and had sex with minors, a military court sentenced them to $ 20 and $ 24 fines.
From 1942 a new boom arose with the construction of the Alaska Highway , with the influx of thousands of workers from southern Canada and the USA. Construction of a road link to Skagway began in the 1950s, but was not completed until 1978. This South Klondike Highway roughly follows the route of the gold prospectors known as Stampeders from 1896 onwards. In contrast, the Whitepass Railway stopped operating in 1982. Ten years earlier, Polly the Parrot, who was a sought-after during the gold rush, was a judge from 1918 and lived in the Carcross Hotel, and who was a famous opera singer, had died. He is said to have been 126 years old.
Today the original parts of the place only serve as museums. The historic railway station of the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad in the town center houses an information center. Most of the residents are Carcross / Tagish people .
Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, the two Indian companions of George Carmack , the man who triggered the gold rush on the Klondike with his gold find at Bonanza Creek, are buried in the Carcross cemetery . Kate Carmack, his Indian wife, is also buried here.
Carcross desert
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North of the village is the "smallest desert in the world": Carcross Desert ( ⊙ ). Real sand dunes, formed from the sandy sediments of an Ice Age lake, cover the ground for just a few square kilometers. The strong wind from Lake Bennett prevents the vegetation from spreading here.
Web links
- A Guide to Carcross, Yukon (Engl.)
- Carcross Tagish First Nation (Engl.)
- Carcross Map (Engl.)
- Link catalog on the subject of Carcross at curlie.org (formerly DMOZ )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Statistics Canada - 2001 Census (Engl.)
- ↑ Carcross Historic Buildings ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 912 kB).
