Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada Dawson City was the center of the Klondike Gold Rush. The rush began in 1896 and the city grew to 40,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted. When Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population was under 5,000. Front St., Dawson City, June 1899. Most of the Stampeders (Klondike gold seekers) who arrived at Dawson in the summer of 1898 never went out into the Klondike watershed to search for gold. In the words of historian and writer Pierre Berton, “it was as if the vitality that had carried these men across the passes and down the rivers, shouting, singing, bickering, and slaving, had been sapped after ten months of struggle.” For these men and women fresh from the trail, the prospect of spending another two seasons doing the hard manual labor necessary to locate and extract gold was exhausting. Many either sold their outfits or landed a job and worked just long enough to earn themselves a steamship ticket back to the outside. Pack train carrying freight in Dawson City, 1899
@Nancy Hart, Great photo! I don't understand the restaurant sign Boxes for Ladies. I wonder if the ladies had to eat outside from a box lunch. I like the adv. for the quack electric belt and the team of Newfoundlands pulling the Flintstone style wagon..
Stokesville, Virginia If you happen to be traveling through the North River Gap of Augusta County, Virginia, you wouldn’t think there was anything unusual about the area. However, something might catch your eye: a small, yellow building. This is in fact the old Stokesville Passenger Depot, one of the last remaining pieces of a truly extraordinary town. A town that vanished.
There are over 100 ghost towns in Yavapai County, Arizona, most within 50 miles of the county seat, Prescott. Most ghost towns in Arizona are former mining boom towns, or mini-boom towns, that were abandoned when the mines closed. The important metallic commodities of Arizona, listed in order of decreasing value, include copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, and lead. Mine Ore Teams near Prescott, Arizona Territory, 1898 (photo from Treasurenet.com)
Those may have been "Elegantly Furnished Private Boxes for Ladies and Parties" as also advertised here: http://www.explorenorth.com/library/history/bennett-historic_hotels.html Great job @Nancy Hart
This is not a BOOMTOWN post but I'm just too lazy to start a new thread. I've been reading about Sunday houses that were built by ranchers who came to town for church, shopping, etc... and needed a little place to stay. This piece of history is new to me. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/cfs01
Hosmer, Britsh Columbia, Canada (coal mining boom town) "The Hosmer Mine was a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway and Hosmer began as a C.P.R. company town. Coal production started in 1908 and by 1910 had a population of over 1,200. In June 1914, the C.P.R. unexpectedly announced that the Hosmer Mine would cease production immediately. Hosmer is not a ghost town. It had a population of 115 in 2011." Looks like these old towns were in serious need of road work. (Photo from Fernietourism.com)
Millinocket, Maine was a boomtown, although not as early of a one as the gold and silver mining towns. The people who founded Great Northern Paper Company chose the spot in the late 1890s, and bought the land for the mill. There were only two farms in the area previously. By 1910, there was a town there. Like other towns in the country, it was known as the "Magic City" because it grew up so quickly. In the last picture, if you look at the line of three houses on the left, ours is the second one from the bottom. In the center of the photo is where our Main Street (Penobscot Avenue) went. Interestingly, to me anyhow, the "Magic City" in the Dakotas became a boomtown because of the Great Northern Railroad, and Millinocket was built by the Great Northern Paper Company.
Cripple Creek, Colorado We passed through Cripple Creek on a family vacation back in the Fifties ('53 or '55). The town at that time was nothing memorable, at least not to a kid, but I remember one incident. My father always liked to try short cuts driving. We were in a brand new Buick, not your off road vehicle. He picked a road near Cripple Creek that looked like a good short cut through the mountains, to get from one main highway to another. The road kept getting narrower, on the steep side of a deep canyon, with no guard rails. Soon it was a one lane gravel road, and there were signs warning you to honk before you went around blind curves. I don't think we ever saw another vehicle going either way. Slow going. I pictured us stuck and spending the night there, maybe never to be found. LOL I've looked for that road several times lately with no luck. It is probably either a paved highway now, or abandoned. I'd like to travel it using Google Street View, just to test my memory. Has anyone here been to Cripple Creek?
When Thomas Hart Benton sketched this panoramic scene from a second-floor window, the smoky fire on the horizon signified progress, not pollution. Borger, Texas was a boomtown that sprang to life in 1926 after a refinery company hit a gusher that produced 5000 gallons of oil a day.
@Frank Sanoica, I just read in another thread, that you once lived in Canon City, Colorado. Did you ever travel the back roads to Cripple Creek? There seems to at least two roads: Phantom Canyon Road and Shelf Road.
@Nancy Hart Yes, I did! As a matter of fact, my house stood on the corner of Central and the street which led northward and became Shelf Road. It was a bit harrowing back then, 1977, with sheer drop-offs of hundreds of feet, so narrow in places, two vehicles could not pass one-another. This was taken in winter, 1977, of my house: It was there that I built my four-wheel drive Ford Ranchero, a 1959, the vehicle Ford should have built! My little cat, KC, was standing guard! Frank