In August 1896 gold was found on a creek off the Klondike River and about a hundred thousand people set out for it, most of them over the passes from the coast. The ground around Dawson City was so rich that men shovelled fortunes out of frozen gravel, and it is still being worked, by hand and by dredge, today. The Yukon is one of the few places on Earth where a visitor can pan the actual creeks of a famous rush, and the territory keeps the rules for doing it short.
| Layer | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Legends and real places | 2 mapped for Yukon |
| Gem sites | 1 in Yukon · see them all |
| World features | Caves, springs, waterfalls, old mines and historic sites, live from OpenStreetMap |
In the Yukon you may pan on public land that has not been withdrawn from prospecting or staking, and that nobody has staked. A claim is somebody’s exclusive right to the gold in it, so the question is always whether the ground is open, and the answer lives at the nearest Mining Recorder’s Office: ask them where recreational panning is permitted before you drive out. The equipment list is two items long, a gold pan and a shovel, and the territory says plainly that use of any other equipment is not allowed.
Historic and prehistoric objects are protected in the Yukon, which in this country means ice age bones, mammoth ivory and the wooden and iron leavings of the rush as much as it means artefacts. Leave what you find where it is and report it to the Cultural Services Branch on 867-667-8589. The permafrost here preserves things that would have rotted anywhere else, and the value of them is mostly in exactly where they were lying.
A marker is a public record, not permission. Check who owns the ground and what the local rules are first. Mining claims and land status on the map are United States records and stop at the border, so in Alberta that check is yours to make.
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