Carcross Village

Carcross, officially called Caribou Crossing in 1899
Bishop Bompass requested it be renamed Carcross in 1904 and the government approved it in 1906
Houses the world’s smallest desert, which has foliage that can be found nowhere else in the world.
All the species found in the north will all be present here, no where else in the Yukon will you find all together in one area like here
Carcross meets the famous White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad (WP&YR) here
May 1901 the Caribou Hotel which at the time was the Yukon Hotel was moved from Bennett to Carcross
On December 24th, 1909 a fire destroyed the Caribou Hotel, WP&YR station and more
The Caribou Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in the Yukon
Tagish People call this area Todezzane, meaning blowing all the time and the Tlingit call it Naataase Heen, water running through the narrows
J. H. Brownlee surveyed the town site in 1899 for WP&YR and was completed in 1900
A ghost is said to haunt the third floor of the Caribou Hotel
Windy Arm and Taku Arm were the scenes of many shipwrecks and drowning, these two lakes were prone to sudden violent storms
Carcross has a world class wall climbing wall at the community school
Carcross has two historic churches, Saint John The Baptist Catholic Church, which was built in 1905, and St. Savior’s Anglican Church which was built in 1902
Caribou Hotel used to house Polly the Parrot who came over the Chilkoot Trail in 1898 and stayed at the Hotel cussing at Patrons and retired after 60 years.
A very rare Black Gopher exists in the Marsh Lake area
Mathew Watson General Store is the oldest operating store in the Yukon

The Chilkoot Trail

The Chilkoot Trail was a trading route for Carcross/Tagish First Nation (CTFN) long before the arrival of the European peoples, and is part of their traditional territory
The Chilkoot Pass remained the lifeline of the trading network through out the long pre-contact period, about 200 years prior
Chilkoot Trail was colloquially known as the “grease trail” because Eulachon oil was the primary ingredient carried over
On April 14, 1975 the Chilkoot Trail was approved by the staff in Washington as a National Registered site.

The First Nation Tagish/Tlingit

In later years CTFN men, women and children worked as packers for many venturing stampeders’
Before contact the Tlingit were highly organized, warlike, sophisticated people
Tagish Indians figure prominently in the history of the gold rush
In 1883 when Schwatka was making his way into Tagish territory, the Tagish were just making the trek over the Chilkoot to the trading store at Pyramid Harbor near Haines
The Tagish had long been middlemen in the trade between the coastal Tlingit and other Tinne (Northern Athapascans)
Next traveler to Tagish country was George Dawson, a Geologist
In 1887 Dawson estimated that 15 Tagish families comprised of a total population of 70 to 80 persons
Sola, a British prospector commented that the Tlingit held yearly festivals and councils of war in an old house at Tagish and that house was surrounded by burial grounds “on either side of the river”
The Klondike Gold Rush was the cataclysmic event in Tagish history marking the end of much of the old way of life

Ethnographic investigations of the Tagish tribe in 1948 suggest that the Tagish were an Athapascan group who had substituted Tlingit for their original language.

The Klondike Gold Rush

Bennett City was abandoned after 1900 and Conrad City in 1914, after the price of silver dropped
The Gold Rush lasted from 1897 to 99
On August 14th, 1896 Skookum Jim, Dawson Charlie, and George Carmacks all struck gold
By Christmas 3,000 miners had made their way to the Yukon, the winter months kept the travel of word slow
By spring a rush of stampeders, City of Mexico (name of the ship) left Seattle March 25th with 600 stampeders on it
By mid July “Klondike Fever” struck with full fury, thousands from across the world dropped everything to head to the Yukon
By June 1898 8,000 to 10,000 people had tented in the Skagway area
April 1898 4-5,000 people in Dyea
April 3, 1898 massive avalanche killed an estimated 65 stampeders on the Chilkoot Trail, 1 mile south of The Scales
Sheep Camp, summer 1897 8,000 stampeders
Canyon City, spring 1898 had 1,000 stampeders
Lindeman and Bennett had 10,00 stamps each in May of 1898

Tagish Village

Until 1900 the primary Tagish settlement was Tagish village, due to activity and railroad construction most of the village moved to Carcross
Tagish means ‘fish trap’ in Tagish
Early miners called it Tako or Tahko Lake
Original location of the Tagish Indian village was three miles south and on the east side of the lake. The Northwest Mounted Police built one of the most important posts here in early 1897
The post that was called Fort Sifton required everyone who was passing through to register; they had more than 28,000 people register.

White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad

White Pass was third railway to propose railway to Bennett
Mid May ties and rail arrive in Skagway
By May 28, 1898 construction on the railroad started
The railroad to Whitehorse was completed July 29, 1900, a year after it reached Bennett