The S.S. Keno is a paddleboat that hauled cargo up and down the Yukon from the early 1920s to the mid 1950s. When the road to Keno City was built in the ’50s, paddlewheelers fell out of favour. For one thing, they were using wood at such a rate that there was a risk of running out of trees! The completion of the Klondike highway to Dawson City was the nail in the paddlewheelers coffin.
On August 23, 1960, the S.S. Keno began her final journey from Whitehorse to Dawson City where she would be dry docked forever and turned into a museum. Today, she is a National Historic Site.
the interpreter thought it would be funny to wear a life jacket today 🙂
Laura Berton was the mother of Pierre Berton’s mother
I wouldn’t have wanted the cabin with the beam running through it!
My favourite part of the exhibit was the movie! It was filmed in August 1960 and documents the S.S. Keno’s final voyage. It answered one of my most burning questions about the Klondike: how did ships pass through Five Finger Rapids? The movie is also good for comic relief when a man waxes poetically about how much easier life was then compared to the 1920’s since modern technology had brought about DDT and mosquitoes were no longer a problem…
Visiting the S.S. Keno takes about an hour and fills in yet another gap of Dawson’s history.