A 61m aerial view overlooking historic Dawson City, Yukon.  With a population of 1,577 as of 2021, it is the second largest city in the territory & has its history heavily associated with the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896-99.  Prior to the gold rush, the confluence of the Yukon & Klondike Rivers on the south side was a fishing location known as Tr'ochëk by the First Nations.  The current settlement was founded by Joseph Ladue in January 1897 & named after Canadian geologist George M. Dawson who had explored and mapped the area ten years prior.  During the gold rush, Dawson City had peaked at a population of 17,000 & had served as the capital of Yukon until 1952 when it was moved to Whitehorse.  When it was incorporated into a town in 1902, Dawson's population dropped to 5,000.

The downtown area has been devastated by fire in November 1897 (that started when dance hall girl Dolly Mitchell threw a lamp at another girl in an argument), 1899 (that started in the Bodega Saloon), 1900 (that started at the Monte Carlo Theatre) and by flooding in 1925, 1944, 1966, 1969 and 1979.

The population dropped after World War II when the Alaska Highway bypassed it 518 kilometres  to the south.  Dawson City's population languished around the 600–900 mark through the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen and held stable since then. The high price of gold has made modern placer mining operations profitable, and the growth of the tourism industry has encouraged development of facilities. In the early 1950s, Dawson was linked by road to Alaska, and in fall 1955, with Whitehorse along a road that now forms part of the Klondike Highway.

In 1978, another kind of buried treasure was discovered with the Dawson Film Find when a construction excavation inadvertently uncovered a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films on highly flammable nitrate film stock from the early 20th century that were buried in (and preserved by) the permafrost. These silent-era film reels, dating from "between 1903 and 1929, were uncovered in the rubble beneath an old hockey rink".  Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility, the historical find was moved by military transport to Library and Archives Canada and the U.S. Library of Congress for both transfer to safety film and storage. A documentary about the find, Dawson City: Frozen Time, was released in 2016.

The City of Dawson and the nearby ghost town of Forty Mile are featured prominently in the novels and short stories of American author Jack London, including The Call of the Wild. London lived in the Dawson area from October 1897 to June 1898. Other writers who lived in and wrote of Dawson City include Pierre Berton and the poet Robert Service. The childhood home of the former is now used as a retreat for professional writers administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada.

Temperatures here in Dawson have ranged from a record high of 35*C (95*F) set on July 9, 1899 as well as June 18, 1950.  The coldest temperature was clocked at -58.3*C (-73*F) on February 3, 1947.  In December 1917, the temperature never rose above -37.2*C (-35*F) & it averaged -46.3*C (-51*F).  To the north one can see the Moosehide Slide, a prominent landmark overlooking the town that occurred roughly 1,740 years ago.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_City