2017 GOLD RUSH SERIES SERIES

Whether youвЂ™re searching for gold, history, or just a good time, Dawson has plenty to offer. вЂњThe best thing I can say about Dawson is that itвЂ™s the only place IвЂ™ve been to where the people felt as wild as the town itself,вЂќ said Thomas Whittaker, a tourist from Yellowknife, N.W.T., who was invited up on stage to take part in GertiesвЂ™ show. They put on three shows a night, seven days a week, throughout the tourist season. If youвЂ™re not into blackjack or roulette, thereвЂ™s always the burlesque performances headed up by none other than Diamond Tooth Gerties and its troupe of dancers. Housed in a building constructed during DawsonвЂ™s heyday in 1901 and repurposed as a tourist attraction in 1971, Gerties succeeds at recreating the atmosphere of the freewheeling, rough-and-tumble days of panhandling prospectors. The town puts its own perverted spin on the preservation of the past in the form of Diamond Tooth Gerties, CanadaвЂ™s oldest casino. In an attempt to bolster its conservation efforts, Dawson will submit an application in 2017 to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.Дawson now is not all dirt roads and boarded-up buildings, though. Parks Canada alone maintains 35 buildings, including the former house of DawsonвЂ™s poet laureate Robert Service, who mused over the trials and tribulations of those who headed North to get rich. It may have been a long time since Dawson had been known as the вЂњParis of the North,вЂќ but various levels of government have gone through great pains to preserve as many of the townвЂ™s historical monuments as possible. вЂњThe engineering marvels that went on here are quite remarkable,вЂќ an enthusiastic Millar said on a tour of the floating structure that could dredge 10,000 gallons of water per minute when it was operational. Standing eight storeys high and with a footprint two-thirds the size of a football field, the gold-digging machine built in 1912 is one of the many marvels of DawsonвЂ™s mining heritage that remains preserved under Parks CanadaвЂ™s watch. In addition to being one of several Dawson outfits to take tourists out to a mine site to play prospector for a day, for the past few years, Millar has been the exclusive tour operator of the monumental Dredge No. вЂњItвЂ™s met my expectations and then some,вЂќ he said.

Knee-deep in a frigid steam with a pan in his hands, Matthew Gartside, a resident of Lancaster, Pa., said bringing his family up to Dawson fulfilled a life-long dream of seeing the North. In 1993, he branched out into the tourism industry and now runs regular tours of his actively mined property, where fledgling prospectors can learn about sluice mining and pan for their own gold. Millar still makes up the lionвЂ™s share of his income from sluice mining - which is far less invasive than underground mining in that it involves searching for gold deposits on the ground or near the surface. Millar, who has been on screen a few times but generally avoids the limelight, continues to mine claims his father staked after the family moved up from Ontario in the 1950s. Nestled on the banks of the Yukon River about 60 kilometres east of the Alaskan border, Dawson City occupies a cosy enclave among the grand landscape that surrounds the town. вЂњThe tourism industry has definitely picked up in the last few years and the people that are coming are much more aware of whatвЂ™s going on because of TV,вЂќ said second-generation gold miner David Millar. The rising stock of the shows has brought on a renewed interest in visiting the small mining town, where miners struck gold for the first time at the end of the 19th century. Yet nothing has come close to shows such as Gold Rush and its National Geographic Channel competitor Yukon Gold, both of which are shot on location in Dawson City. In recent years, however, reality-TV shows based in CanadaвЂ™s far north - Ice Pilots NWT, Ice Road Truckers - have become increasingly popular.

2017 GOLD RUSH SERIES SERIES

When the seventh season of the Yukon-based reality-TV series Gold Rush premiered on Discovery Channel last year, it fell just short of the top spot on American cable, coming second only to the opening game of the ALCS between the Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays.

is about as rare as - well, as rare as getting rich as a sluice miner in the Yukon in 2016. DAWSON CITY, YUKON-Having a television show set in Canada strike ratings gold in the U.S.

2017 gold rush series