Dawson grew from zero population to over thirty thousand when George Carmack and his partners found gold in nearby Rabbit Creek. Rabbit Creek was named Bonanza Creek and the gold rush was underway. Thousands arrived in Dawson only to find most of the good spots already claimed, some started businesses to provide services to the miners: dry goods, food, lodging, etc. Early buildings were built without regard of the permeant frost layer in the soil. Once built and heated the frost in the soil started to melt, this did strange things to the foundation. Many of the early structures, that still survive, are sitting at odd angles. Now, they have a method of building that allows it to float above the frost and move with it. While we were there we went on a walking tour of the town, ate in one of the restaurants and took a ride up the Dome road. The Dome road lead about 4 miles to a dome shaped height of land where you could look down on the surrounding countryside. We were up on the Dome at 10 o’clock at night and planned to stay for the sunset….until we found out sunset that night was 12:40 am. On the way down from the Dome we stopped at the Catholic cemetery..which was interesting. While taking the walking tour we found out that the exterior of some early building were covered with leaded tin that was made to look like stone. In the cemetery some larger memorial stones, looked like stone, but on closer inspection were leaded tin. We learned a great deal about the gold stampede. It was, in my opinion, a sad episode in our history. Very few people got rich, thousands of people and animals died. We saw a feature, from the train, called Dead horse Gulch, were thousands of pack animals died (horses, mules, dogs). But it was an extremely interesting place and I’m glad we went.