Buckets of Steel Traditional Geocache
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Buckets of Steel - Rusty and Old - Famous for dredging and digging for gold -
While you are here, take the time to visit the S.S. Klondike.
The British Yukon Navigation Company sternwheel fleet plied the upper Yukon River between Whitehorse and Dawson City for the first half of the Twentieth Century. The S.S. Klondike was the largest of the BYN Company fleet.
The S.S. Klondike was built in Whitehorse in 1929. Of shallow draft, she was specifically designed and constructed to eliminate the need to push a barge when carrying the heavy ore sacks coming out of the Mayo silver mining district up river to Whitehorse. With a cargo capacity 50 percent greater than other boats on the river at the time, she was the first sternwheeler on the Yukon River large enough to handle a cargo in excess of 272 tonnes (300 tons) without having to push a barge.
Initially, the S.S. Klondike operated between Whitehorse and Stewart Landing. On her downstream run, she would carry freight bound for the Mayo Mining District. On her return trip, she would carry silver-lead ore from the Mayo District that had been brought down the Stewart River aboard smaller sternwheelers such as the S.S. Keno. In Whitehorse, the ore would be transferred to the White Pass and Yukon Route for shipment by rail to Skagway, Alaska. The effects of the depression soon saw the S.S. Klondike moved to the Whitehorse - Dawson City run where she carried both passengers and freight, though she continued to be regarded primarily as a cargo vessel.
The career of the S.S. Klondike came to an abrupt end in 1936 when the vessel sank on a section of the Yukon River known as the Thirty Mile. BYN Co. immediately built the S.S. Klondike II, a virtual carbon copy of her predecessor, which was launched in the spring of 1937 continued to work the Whitehorse-Dawson City run until 1952 when the Mayo Road was extended to Dawson.
Today restored to her orginal 1937-40 appearance, the S.S. Klondike pays tribute to an era of riverboat transportation and the inland water transportation system that linked the Yukon to the outside world before the advent of roads.
This is a micro cache so please bring a pencil/pen and do sign the log.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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