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Dawson City’s new Yukon gold rush becomes subject of U.S. media fascination

Dawson City is never going to be mistaken for the warmest city in Canada, but recent media coverage of the Yukon gold mining town, population 1,300, has turned it into the hottest.

The cover story in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times Magazine should further burnish its current image as an economic oasis.

"Gold Mania in the Yukon" has profiled Shawn Ryan, who met his wife Cathy Wood in Whitehorse in 1992. They teamed up to pick mushrooms and were down to their last $5 within a year.

After they moved into an abandoned miner's shack, made out of tin, Ryan tried to figure out how to break into the largely forgotten field of prospecting instead.

An answer might have been found at the bottom of creeks and streams, which Ryan's friend Antonie Deschenes suggested might have travelled all the way down the Klondike into the Yukon River after a century of erosion.

Deschenes tried to dive down himself and after a third attempt in 2001, his body was never found.

The article by Gary Wolf has detailed how Ryan then became even more motivated to figure out where the gold was located.

An aerial magnetic-resonance survey of the Yukon provided clues about which soil was worth sampling for potential deposits. But in order to seek it out the couple put up all they had saved up from years of mushroom picking: $3,000.

Needless to say, the effort was eventually successful south of Dawson City in 2004. And the White Gold deposit became even more rewarding as the price started to soar.

Ryan scored about $6 million when the company that took advantage of his discoveries, Underworld Resources, was sold to Kinross Gold last year. And his own claims company, Ryan Gold, has been backed with $20 million more amidst the ongoing land-grab game.

With a new generation of workers from more than 140 exploration companies expected to pour into the Yukon this season, though, it's uncertain where they're all going to sleep.

Nonetheless, as recently pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, the stakers have learned to be wary of grizzly bears.

More tourists are expected to start visiting Dawson, too.

An old Klondike brothel, transformed into Bombay Peggy's Inn and Pub, has boasted how it hosted Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson when they came to town to film a scene for the forthcoming bird-watching comedy "The Big Year."

(CBC Photo)