1910 Canadian Department of the Interior Map of Timber Berths in the Yukon Territory

Canada attempts to regulate the Yukon Timber Boom.

This is a unique 1910 Canadian Department of the Interior map of the timber berths, transportation networks, waterways, and government outposts across the Yukon Territory at the close of the Klondike Gold Rush. It illustrates the Canadian government's attempt to regulate the Timber Boom that followed the Yukon Gold Rush. More than 100 licensed timber berths appear alongside the Klondike Mines Railway, the White Pass and Yukon Route, and numerous North-West Mounted Police posts. Published when Yukon sawmills produced more than two million board feet of lumber annually, the map offers a monumental (8.5 feet long!) record of resource management, industrial development, and transportation in northern Canada.

A Closer Look

Coverage embraces from the Porcupine River south to Skagway, Alaska, and from the confluence of the Forty Mile and Yukon Rivers, west of Dawson, eastward to Teslin Lake. More than 100 numbered timber berths are delineated, while an extensive network of lakes, rivers, streams, and creeks reveals the waterways essential to transportation, mining, settlement, and logging.

The Yukon-British Columbia boundary is prominently marked, but the British Columbia-Alaska boundary is omitted, making Skagway appear to lie within British Columbia. The short-lived Klondike Mines Railway and the White Pass and Yukon Route are both traced. The abbreviation 'N.W.M.P.' identifies North-West Mounted Police outposts throughout.

Timber Berths in the Yukon

Volume 15 of the Sessional Papers of the Second Session of the Eleventh Parliament of the Dominion of Canada records the scale of Yukon's timber industry in 1910:

The total amount of dues collected on account of timber in the Yukon Territory during the fiscal year was $26,482.64.

There are in existence 114 timber berths held under license to cut timber within the Territory, covering an area of 269.86 square miles, which licenses were granted prior to May 10, 1906, on which date the regulations governing the granting of licenses to cut timber in the Territory were rescinded, and regulations for the issue of permits to cut such timber substituted therefor. Two saw-mills are in operation within the Territory, one on the Klondike river, near Dawson, and one on Twelvemile river.

According to returns received in the department of feet, board measure, of lumber manufactured during the year was 2,129,113, and the quantity sold 2,358,973, a quantity of the lumber having been held over from the previous year. The number of cords of wood cut during the year was 10,545, and the number sold 8,493 1/4. This does not include the very large amount of timber and cordwood cut free of dues for mining purposes.

These figures underscore the importance of timber to the Yukon economy. Lumber supported mines, settlements, railroads, river traffic, and construction, while large quantities of wood used for mining purposes were exempt from government dues and therefore absent from official totals.

The Klondike Mines Railway

The Klondike Mines Railway was a narrow-gauge line connecting Dawson City with the gold-producing districts around Sulphur Springs. Construction began in 1903, and the completed route extended 31.81 miles. Conceived to serve the Klondike mining industry, the railway suffered as regional population and gold production declined. It ceased operations in 1913, making its appearance on this map an important record of its brief existence.

The White Pass and Yukon Route

The White Pass and Yukon Route is a narrow-gauge railway linking Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, Yukon. Founded in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush, it was completed in 1900 to provide reliable access from the Pacific coast to the Yukon interior. Isolated from the continental rail network, the line operated until 1982 and reopened in 1988 as a heritage railway.

Writing in the Victoria Colonist on December 2, 1900, one reporter praised the undertaking:

It is no disparagement to other mountain railways to say that the construction of the White Pass and Yukon is among the most brilliant feats of railway engineering in view of the tremendous difficulties to be encountered and the shortness of time in which the work was done.

Yukon Timber Boom

The 'Yukon Timber Boom', though not officially defined as such, emerged as a companion industry to the Klondike Gold Rush. After gold was discovered in 1896 and news reached the outside world in 1897, Dawson City expanded almost overnight. Thousands of arrivals required houses, hotels, saloons, warehouses, government buildings, mines, bridges, boats, railroad ties, and fuel. Because importing lumber into the remote Yukon was slow and expensive, local forests became an essential industrial resource.

Sawmills quickly appeared along navigable rivers and lakes, where logs could be floated to processing centers. Seven mills reportedly operated during the Gold Rush. The Yukon Sawmill Company, which registered a timber lease in March 1898, became the region's largest and longest-lived producer. At its peak, its Dawson operation included a three-block lumberyard, a foundry, and what was described as the largest machine shop north of Vancouver. First Nations and non-Indigenous contractors cut timber and assembled immense log booms that were floated down the Yukon River to Dawson.

Timber supported much more than construction. Mines consumed enormous quantities for shafts, sluices, flumes, cribbing, and thawing frozen ground. Steam-powered equipment, sawmills, and riverboats required fuel, while railroads needed ties, bridges, stations, and maintenance facilities. Around lakes on the routes to the Klondike, mills often began by cutting the most accessible nearby trees.

The Canadian government attempted to regulate this exploitation through licensed 'timber berths' and later cutting permits. By 1910, official records listed 114 licensed berths covering nearly 270 square miles. Two Yukon sawmills remained in operation, and reported annual production exceeded 2.1 million board feet - excluding large quantities cut duty-free for mining.

The boom was intense but comparatively brief. As Dawson's population declined and large-scale construction slowed, lumber demand contracted. Surviving companies increasingly served established mining operations through machine work, repairs, and industrial supplies. The industry nevertheless left a lasting environmental and historical imprint: altered forests, abandoned mills and timber camps, and government maps documenting the transformation of Yukon woodland into the material infrastructure of the Gold Rush.

Publication History and Census

The map was drawn by Samuel M. Senes, Chief Draughtsman of the Mining Lands and Yukon Branch of the Canadian Department of the Interior, and published by that department in 1910. It is unclear how it was printed, but the paper and ink tones suggest a type of heliographic (sunprint) whiteprint process. This is the only known surviving example.

Condition

Very good. Printed on waxed linen. Unrepaired margin tears. Slight loss to margin in lower left corner. Toning.