Haines Junction –On the doorstep to Canada’s highest mountains & a UNESCO World Heritage Site
The Village of Haines Junction lies in southwestern Yukon in an expansive, flat-bottomed valley known as the Shakwak Trench. To the east are the low rolling hills of Yukon’s Interior Plateau. Rising abruptly to the west are the St. Elias Mountains of Kluane National Park and Reserve–the breathtaking backdrop to our community.
The peaks visible from the community and that parallel the highway form the Kluane Ranges, rising to heights of 3,438 m (8,000 ft.). Beyond, but mostly hidden from view, are the peaks of the Icefield Ranges. These are the big ones, including Mt. Logan, Canada’s highest at 5959 meters (19,549 feet). Here, too, lies the largest non-polar ice cap on the planet–immense valleys and huge rivers of ice, some as long as 100 km. This is an ice age landscape.
Designated a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site, Kluane National Park and Reserve–together with Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park to the south in British Columbia and Wrangell-St.Elias National Park and Glacier Bay National Park to the west in Alaska–comprise 9.8 million hectares of outstanding wilderness, the largest internationally protected wilderness area in the world.
Dynamic landscape
These mountains are the youngest and most geologically active in North America. Major fault lines in the earth’s crust and the resulting tectonic activity are forcing the mountains still higher–they are rising several millimeters per year. Together, with the power of flowing rivers of ice, they make for a dynamic landscape.
It was a river of ice in the early 1700s that caused the flooding of the Shakwak Valley where Haines Junction now lies. From 1725 to 1850 a huge glacial lake filled the valley. In fact, signs in the landscape such as old beach ridges and First Nations oral history, both tell us that massive lakes have formed here on a number of occasions over time. The most recent flooding was caused when the Lowell Glacier surged forward and blocked the flow of the Alsek River.
Diversity of plant and animal life
It took many years for the forests to develop after the most recent glacial lake in the valley drained. In the early 1900s the valley was open benches and grassy meadows. Today the area of Haines Junction is blanketed in spruce forest mixed with poplar and aspen and the valley supports healthy populations of moose, black bear, wolverine, muskrat, lynx, and coyote (to name a few). One hundred and eighteen species of birds nest in the area. In the high country, Dall sheep are the most abundant large mammal, and a high density of grizzly bears roam the alpine and wide river flats. With an overlap of Coastal and Arctic climates, this area has one the greatest diversities of plant and animal life in northern Canada.
For at least 5,000 years Southern Tutchone people have lived in the shadow of the big mountains. They adapted to the ever-changing landscape and hunted, fished, trapped and gathered food in the area. Access to the coast was controlled at Chilkat Pass by the Tlingit-speaking Chilkats of Alaska, but there was active trading between the two groups as well as intermarriage and clashes.
Europeans first explored over Chilkat Pass and into the interior in the late 1800s. Jack Dalton, an American, was one of these early explorers. He returned to the area in 1894 and by 1896 had established a series of trading posts in the interior, and then a packtrail over Chilkat Pass and on to the Klondike goldfields. One of his trading posts, Dalton Post, was on the Tatshenshini River south of present day Haines Junction. Dalton’s Trail was abandoned with the coming of the White Pass railway from Skagway to Whitehorse and the riverboats on the Yukon River.
In 1903 gold was discovered east of Kluane Lake. More than 2,000 gold seekers poured into the area with high hopes. They gathered at Sheep, Bullion and Burwash Creeks and a mining settlement, Silver City, sprang to life on the south shore of Kluane Lake. But little gold was found and most of the miners moved on within a year.
This short-lived gold rush precipitated the building of a wagon road between Whitehorse and Silver City. It was along this wagon road that the Alaska Highway would eventually be built in 1942.
The building of the Alaska Highway was the next big event in the history of the area, one which led to the establishment of Haines Junction.
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