Bennett,

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...

, Canada, is an abandoned town next to

Bennett Lake Bennett Lake is a lake in the Province of British Columbia and Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada, at an elevation of 2602 ft. (642 m.) . It is just north of the border with the United States state of Alaska, near the Alaskan port of Skagw ...

and along

Lindeman Creek Lindeman Creek, formerly known as One Mile River connects Bennett Lake to Lindeman Lake, areas on the Chilkoot Trail in far northwestern British Columbia, Canada. The caption for an 1897 Frank La Roche photograph refers to it as the Lewes Ri ...

(formerly known as the One Mile River). The townsite is now part of the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site of Canada and is managed by Parks Canada. Bennett is also a stop on the

White Pass and Yukon Route The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other rai ...

railroad during the summer months.

History

Bennett was built during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897–1899 at the end of the

White Pass White Pass, also known as the Dead Horse Trail, (elevation ) is a mountain pass through the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains on the border of the U.S. state of Alaska and the province of British Columbia, Canada. It leads from Skagway, Ala ...

and

Chilkoot Trail The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, in the United States, to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada. It was a major access route from the coast to Yukon goldfields in the lat ...

s from the nearby ports of

Skagway The Municipality and Borough of Skagway is a first-class borough in Alaska on the Alaska Panhandle. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,240, up from 968 in 2010. The population doubles in the summer tourist season in order to deal wit ...

and

Dyea Dyea ( ) is a former town in the U.S. state of Alaska. A few people live on individual small homesteads in the valley; however, it is largely abandoned. It is located at the convergence of the Taiya River and Taiya Inlet on the south side of th ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...

. Gold prospectors would pack their supplies over the

Coast Mountains The Coast Mountains (french: La chaîne Côtière) are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbi ...

from the ports and then build or purchase rafts to take them down the

Yukon River The Yukon River ( Gwich'in: ''Ųųg Han'' or ''Yuk Han'', Yup'ik: ''Kuigpak'', Inupiaq: ''Kuukpak'', Deg Xinag: ''Yeqin'', Hän: ''Tth'echù'' or ''Chuu k'onn'', Southern Tutchone: Chu Nìikwän, russian: Юкон, Yukon) is a major watercour ...

to the gold fields around

Dawson City, Yukon Dawson may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dawson (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Dawson (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name Places Antarctic ...

. When the

Railroad was completed in 1900 it went right to Whitehorse, passing the town. This led the entire economy of Bennett, based on stampeders and river travelers, to collapse. One of the establishments in Bennett was the Arctic Hotel, a combination saloon, restaurant, and hotel set up by Friedrich "Fred" Trump (grandfather of

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

) and Ernest Levin. The establishment included a brothel, a portrayal that

said was "totally false".

References

External links

* {{Authority control Klondike Gold Rush Ghost towns in British Columbia Atlin District 1897 establishments in British Columbia Populated places established in 1897 1900 disestablishments in British Columbia